Heritage

The present day Lynwood Gardens are on the site of a Georgian house known as Broombank House. This was one of a group of large houses built in the 1820s to take advantage of the newly opened Glossop Turnpike Road. The first Toll Bar was in the grounds of what is now Hanrahans. Neighbouring houses, such as Broombank House took advantage of back lanes to have the maximum use of the road without having to pay a toll.

Francis Newton, the builder of Broombank House, was very prosperous cutlery manufacturer with large works at Portobello, (close to the University of Sheffield) within easy walking or riding distance from his home. Newton was also a Director of the Sheffield Banking Company Ltd. About 1823 Newton bought the Hobson Field, originally part of the Broomhall Estate. Despite his wealth Newton had a relatively modest house but he enjoyed a rural setting – the 3½ acre grounds were almost three times the size of any other nearby estate and by the time of his death in 1864 he had added another acre so that the grounds took in the former Rough Field of Broomhall to the south and engulfed the houses that are now Park Crescent.

Broombank House had wide bands of a mixture of evergreen and deciduous trees on its boundaries so that it was completely screened from the outside world. The garden itself seems to have been mainly a Capability Brown landscape in miniature, consisting of grassy banks surrounding random clumps of trees. On the western side to the north of what is now Park Lane Crescent was an irregularly shaped pond which eventually came to measure about 50 feet at its longest point. To the south of the lake a barrier of trees hid what seems to have been extensive kitchen gardens and orchards.

This rural idyll came to an end with the death of Newton. The new owner immediately sold off the western part of the estate to form what is now Richmond Villas and the present road was put through to form Park Lane Crescent. The house itself was extended and the impressive coach entrance still to be seen on Clarkehouse Road was erected. Given the present use of the house it seems appropriate that all this building was done by a brewer, Henry Simpson, owner of the Thomas Rawson & Co. brewery.

For the remainder of the nineteenth century Simpson, and his successor, William Wilson of the Snuff Mill, kept the heavily wooded boundaries. To the south east, greenhouses and kitchen gardens were laid out but the mixture of grass and trees remained without any of the complex flower beds to be found in some nearby properties. To the south west the tangled mixture of trees and undergrowth now being explored by the Friends of Lynwood Gardens probably hides much of the original planting which was familiar to Francis Newton in the early decades of the nineteenth century.

 
Above: Images of the crozzal wall and arch
Below : Drystone wall near the Park Crescent entrance

Research and report by Dr Nyra Wilson. Friends of Lynwood gardens are very grateful for her help and support.