An Edwardian Connection, Broomhill, Sheffield

Not quite Broomhill, but the best I could come up with at short notice: it is just down the road in Walkley.

Yesterday's postcard was addressed to Miss Gertrude Marsh who, in 1906, was living at 122 William Street, Broomhall Sheffield. My thanks to Wibbo for tracking Gertrude down and to Michael and Hanne for the suggestion that she married Raymond in 1896 when, as far as I can make out, she would have been three years old! Interestingly, M&H suggested that they were married in Broomhill (which is just up the road from Broomhall). It is interesting because there is a connection (I have a feeling it is going to be a week of connections) : I used to live in Broomhill.

Back in early 1978, the GLW and I were living down in London. I was working in politics and the GLW was a classicist with a belief that there must be more to life than translating Livy. Her dream was to go to Medical School and Sheffield University had the imagination and foresight to offer her a place. So in the summer of that year we turned our backs on London and with little more than a plastic television and a home made sofa-bed, we moved to Sheffield. We found accommodation on the top floor of a wonderful old Edwardian house in Broomhill. The GLW embarked on a six year course of study and I eventually found a job lecturing in nearby Doncaster.

I still know Broomhill well: the Lad - who has followed his mother to Sheffield Medical School - lives just up the road, as do our good friends and cruising companions H&E. Now it is very much a student enclave but there is still a grandeur about the buildings. That wonderful poet, John Betjeman summed it up perfectly in a poem he wrote entitled "An Edwardian Sunday, Broomhill, Sheffield" Here is the first verse:

High dormers are rising 

So sharp and surprising, 

And ponticum edges 

The driveways of gravel; 

Stone houses from ledges 

Look down on ravines. 

The vision can travel 

From gable to gable, 

Italianate mansion 

And turretted stable, 

A sylvan expansion 

So varied and jolly 

Where laurel and holly 

Commingle their greens.