- it was to be used for education or housing
- no pubs were to be built on it
Miss Wake's wishes were accordingly carried out.
The estate at that time comprised:
- 69 acres, 1 rood, 15 perches
- the mansion
- 6 cottages on Stubbin Lane
- 14 cottages at Bell House
- 4 cottages at Bolsover
- Farm House (situated behind Stubbin Land shops and rented out)
After the sale had gone through, the rest of the
Brushes estate became a Council housing estate known as the 'Oval' as it was
designed in the shape of an oval (see map). House
building started in 1922 and was completed by 1924. The
'Bluebell' footpath to Firth Park Post
Office disappeared shortly afterwards but part of the old dry-stone wall
followed by countless school pupils can be traced all along Barnsley Road as
far as Hucklow Road School.
Some of many trees within The Brushes estate were left intact into the
council estate but the majority were felled. Mr. Rhodes of Redcar recalls as
a boy spending day after day watching the workmen in their 'camp' in the
middle of the Oval, with scores of enormous beech trees being felled and
sawn up. There were rows of steam-engines to drag down the trees. This went
on for over a year. The Mausoleum standing at the lower end of the estate
was destroyed and the human remains were transferred to Burngreave cemetery
on 12 January 1922.
Stat Fortuna Domus *
Many hundreds of university places were secured by the boys of Firth Park Grammar School after they left. Forty places were secured at Oxford or Cambridge between the years 1942 - 1977. Several Old Firparnians have been undergraduates at Trinity College, Cambridge, following in the steps of George Booth (1791 - 1859) one of the inhabitants of the old Brushes estate. As a matter of interest, three Firparnians were members of Magdalen College, Oxford, where George was a Fellow from 1816 to 1833. George became an Anglican vicar and would have been interested in the career of Raymond Hockley, formerly Chaplain at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Precentor at York Minster during the 1970s.
Many old Firparnians entered the medical profession, like John Kay Booth. Some were undergraduates at Cambridge, London or Bristol: but John K. would have been specially pleased that Steve Cannon achieved 1st Class Honours in Medicine at Trinity College Cambridge.
Large numbers of Firth Park boys made their careers in the Sheffield steel industry. Thomas Booth would have been delighted that the Master Cutler for 1977-78 is an old boy of The Brushes, Stanley Speight and Chairman of Neepsend Steel Company on the River Don, about two miles upstream from Park Iron Works. Thomas, too - at heart a countryman - would be pleased to know that a contemporary of Stanley Speight, Peter Walters, is today Principal of an Agricultural College in Wiltshire.
The school War Memorial and Honours Board of World
War II, situated in the entrance hall of The Brushes school, linked the
heroism and sacrifice of the old boys of Firth Park in the war against
Hitler, with that of Charles, William and Henry Booth in the war against
Napoleon:
"Sunt Lacrimae Rerum, et Mentem Mortalia Tangunt" - Virgil
(translated to: "There are tears shed for things and mortality touches the
heart")
* Virgil (translated: "The good fortune of the house stands")
(Adapted from 'The Brushes Story' by T F ('Spike') Johnson)
