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Visiting

Town Centre Trail

Town Centre Trail Map

From the Tourist Information Centre in the Central Library and Arts Centre, leave the building on the ground floor, where you will emerge into the pedestrianised Walker Place. Turning left towards the town centre, you will find yourself in Effingham Square with, over to your right, Hastings Clock, given to the town in 1912 by James Hastings. Effingham Square was only recently fully pedestrianised, and re-landscaped.

This is a photograph of Hastings Clock.

Continue past the former Town Hall and Rotherham Interchange. The Old Town Hall was created in the 1980s from the former Town Hall, Assembly Rooms and Police Station; imaginative architecture has enabled most of the original facade to be preserved while opening up the interior as a light and airy shopping arcade. Note the preserved stained glass above the interior of the Effingham Street facade, and the modern first floor exterior stained glass at the junction of Howard Street and Effingham Street.

This is a photograph of the Old Town Hall.

Beyond the Interchange, you reach Rotherham Bridge and the Chapel on the Bridge, one of only three remaining in the country. The medieval bridge, once the main approach to the town from the north, was used by traffic until 1930, and during the Civil War was the scene of a valiant, but unsuccessful, defence of the town against the Royalist army of the Earl of Newcastle; the defenders included boys from the Grammar School.

This is a photograph of the Chapel on the Bridge.

The Chapel of Our Lady, sited on the bridge, was endowed by the will of John Bokyng in 1483, but closed under King Edward VI in 1547. Rededicated in 1924, it is open for service each Tuesday morning. There is a display on the chapel's history inside, as well as an Interpretative Panel in the riverside seating opposite.

Retrace your steps for a few yards and turn right into Bridgegate, an attractive approach to All Saints Square and the Parish Church. All Saints Square houses a fine collection, if you raise your eyes above ground floor level, of half-timbered buildings dating from the 1920s. Turn right into Upper Millgate and then immediately left into Church Street.

This is a photograph of All Saints' Square.

Towards the top of the hill you will find the main entrance to the Parish Church of All Saints, described by Pevsner as "one of the largest and stateliest of parish churches in Yorkshire", built during the fifteenth century on the site of an earlier Saxon Church. There is an interpretative display inside the Church. From Church Street, turn right into Market Street, where you will pass the recently restored Imperial Buildings, originally built in 1907, which won a Civic Trust award for refurbishment in 1994. Take time to look around its internal quadrangle.

This is a photograph of All Saints' Church.

Turning right into Corporation Street, you will pass the notable National Westminster Bank building, built from local red sandstone in 1893, then turn left opposite Upper Millgate through the covered arcade which takes you through a shopping centre on the site of the Town Mill, and across a covered walkway over the River Don. If you head directly for the new Courthouse across the supermarket car park, you will find yourself crossing the South Yorkshire Navigation on a stone bridge at Rotherham Lock.

This is a photograph of the National Westminster building.

This is a photograph of the Rotherham Lock.

Turning left past the courthouse through its attractively landscaped environs, follow the slope up past the modern police station and turn left along Main Street, back across the canal and the adjacent river, towards the town. At the road junction beyond the sorting office, built on the site of the former Westgate Railway Station, cross diagonally left and walk up Ship Hill on to the Crofts. This is the site of the old cattle market.

The imposing building on the left is the Town Hall, formerly the Court House, and opposite is the unusually grandiose Talbot Lane Methodist Chapel, opened in 1903 to replace an earlier chapel on the site where John Wesley preached in 1761, and again in 1770. The new Civic Square in front of the Town Hall was created in 1998; it includes an original Walker Cannon manufactured some two hundred years ago by the local ironfounders of that name.

This is a photgraph of the Town Hall.

Turn left along the front of the Town Hall and follow Moorgate Street downhill towards the Church spire. Note the fine brick details on some of the facades in the street, which was created in the nineteenth century. At the foot of the hill you will find yourself in High Street, a much earlier street and home of the medieval Three Cranes Inn and, at its foot, the monumental Bank Buildings of 1892. The father in law of the nineteenth century novelist Anthony Trollope was once manager at the previous bank on this site.

This is a photograph of the Three Cranes.

Walking straight across the junction, follow Doncaster Gate uphill and pass first Doncaster Gate Hospital on the right and then the Civic Theatre on the left until you reach a crossroads. Diagonally opposite you will see the main entrance to Clifton Park, opened in 1891 by the Prince of Wales.

A short walk up through the park, past the granite and sandstone War Memorial, will take you to Clifton Park Museum, formerly the 18th century home of the Walker family and now housing the finest public collection of Rockingham Pottery in the country, now in newly refurbished galleries. A short walk downhill from the park gates brings you back to the Central Library and Arts Centre, the Tourist Information Centre, and the end of your walk.

This is an aerial photgraph of the Museum.