Rotherham

The Chapel of Our Lady, Rotherham

Rotherham is Sheffield's little brother. The two places are very close. The population of the borough of Rotherham is around 275,000 though the town itself is home to 110,000. It has an ancient heart as evidenced by Rotherham Bridge Chapel, shown above. This dates from the fifteenth century.

From the late eighteenth century, through to the start of the twentieth century, Rotherham became a significant industrial town with steelworks and factories transforming its original character. Later, there was painful decline and the town became a shadow of its former self. It didn't help that Yorkshire's biggest shopping centre - Meadowhall - was built on Rotherham's doorstep.

I travelled there on a "Supertram" tram-train from Sheffield Cathedral. It took me all the way to the Parkgate shopping centre - another reason why the centre of Rotherham feels like a neglected ghost town.

At Parkgate, there's a big Boots store - Boots being  this country's  biggest health and beauty products retailer. I popped in to buy some sunglasses for our trip to Egypt. Oh bejus! Some of those sunglasses cost between £100 and £200! I settled for a Boots home brand pair for £10 complete with a soft case. Nobody would know the difference.

Then it was on to the Cancer Research store I mentioned yesterday before making my way over footbridges that crossed the railway track, The River Don and The South Yorkshire Navigation Canal.

Soon I was in the suburb of Eastwood which is deprived and contains a large pocket of Muslim households with roots back in Pakistan and Bangladesh. This community was home to some very bad men who were guilty of the sexual abuse and exploitation of hundreds of vulnerable young girls and women between the 1980s and 2013. A number of those vile men are now locked up but there are probably others who still stalk the streets of Eastwood because the law never caught up with them. 

Crocuses in Clifton Park

I walked up Cottenham Road to Clifton Park which is spacious and well-kept in its maturity. There I paused at the cenotaph to pay my respects to Rotherham's war dead, noting the surname Jackson - my mother's maiden name. She was raised in the borough.

Then on to the sad "High Street" but beyond that the magnificence of Rotherham Minster - a Grade One listed church on the national register. It was built between 1480 and 1512 though the site had church buildings on it throughout the previous six hundred years.

I went inside hoping to view interior details but there was an event on. It was just about to begin and a hundred people were sitting in the wooden pews with a big screen in front of them. With a free coffee in hand, I decided to join them - just for the first half hour.

We watched a short Netflix documentary film called "The Dreamlife of Georgie Stone", set in Melbourne, Australia concerning a young trans woman's fight for the life she wanted to live. I take my hat off to her and to her supportive family. The film taught me some things and made me think better about trans people and trans rights.

Soon after that I was down at Rotherham Central Station ready for the tram-train home. It had been a very pleasant day out during which I conversed with half a dozen townsfolk. I will return before too long when hopefully I can peruse the minster's interior properly.