South Yorkshire Times September 10, 1949

Round Your Way – Kilnhurst

Kilnhurst – looking across the railway line to the colliery

Kilnhurst, once near-neighbour to Swinton, is stretching out its arms to link with the sister township and the old Kilnhurst is being lost in the new. If, as children do with three-dimensional spectacles, you could look on Kilnhurst through a glass which faded out the new, you would see the village as it was perhaps fifteen to twenty year ago, a mostly stone Kilnhurst, weathered by atmosphere and darkened by industry, a Kilnhurst with an old familiar identity. Kilnhurst has expanded as rapidly as any neighbouring area of similar size, a red brick Kilnhurst, like pieces in a giant wheel built around that green hub which still provides an opportunity for Saturday football.

You may look on Kilnhurst from several angles. From the heights of Swinton Athletic ground it lies in a green valley, the uneven agricultural patches of yellow and green farmland rising away to the horizon; the cluster of trees below. From Meadow View, past old houses and Rock Tavern, bright with holly hocks, you may still look down on rooftops, and on industry — Bakers on your left, beyond the railway line that carries the world to and fro, the colliery ahead, a collier, from this point backed by wood land and bounded by unnatural mountains of grey-brown slag.

Andin a township of contrasts. Sivilla Road rises high above, on your right a thoroughfare which, by the sea might well have been “Seacrest.”

As I looked down on rows of roof-tops I thought how much Kilnhurst owed to its green patches and its trees. It is at once in character with all parts of South Yorkshire that neither grime nor industry are long allowed completely to dominate, and Kilnhurst offers another example of that character. Trees push their bushy green branches up among the bricks and in open spaces off the main shopping centre, a narrow, brown, metalled road, willow herb brings light and colour.

The older links with the past look down on you from date stones set in chapel walls, and there is a mixture of old and new as you approach the station and the little church school, bringing their atmosphere of village life to contrast with the more modern “Halt” Sign by the awkward bridge turning.

Kilnhurst is bounded by bridges, that on the road leading out to Hooton Roberts sheltering the rooftop of the Ship Inn. And if you wander far enough along this road you can look back on Kilnhurst from yet another angle. This time it rises away from you and for the first time you are in Kilnhurst and of it.

I saw a dirty, faded, “S” for Shelter sign, just along the road—one common touch that made the whole of this little world kin with the rest.