Sandal
Barnsley Road Sandal Castle barbican
son Edward to take up the Yorkist claim and he briefly became the first Yorkist king of England as Edward IV. Edward subsequently erected a wooden cross on the spot where his father died. It was destroyed in the 1640’s during the Civil War and not replaced until 1897 when a stone monument was built by public subscription which still stands outside Manygates Education Centre.
Towards the end of The Wars of the Roses in 1484 the last Plantagenet and Yorkist King of England, Richard III (1452-85), decided to make Sandal Castle the base for a permanent household in the north. His new phase of building had only just got underway when he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth (1485) which gave final victory to the Lancastrians. Further construction at Sandal perished with him. The castle went into a slow decline from this point and was unoccupied by 1600, though it was briefly re-fortified as a Royalist garrison in 1645 during the Civil War. In 1646 the Parliamentarians dismantled the defences and the castle lay derelict and undisturbed until it was excavated between 1964-73. The castle is currently in the care of Wakefield Council. Entry is free and although there isn’t much existing
exposed stonework the castle layout is clear and there are extensive views. Domesday tells us there was a Saxon church in Sandal long before the castle was constructed. Around 1150 that was replaced by a stone church in the shape of a Latin cross by Earl Warenne. The church was completely rebuilt and enlarged during the 14th century with further refurbishments in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. A major Victorian ‘restoration’ in 1872 gave us the St Helen’s that we can see today. Some Norman masonry survives in the base of the tower which confirms that there has been a church on this exact spot for over a thousand years.
Life for the ordinary people of Sandal remained predominantly quiet and agricultural in a scattered community of farms and cottages with the church at its centre. There were a few colourful characters along the way; notorious highwayman John Nevison, who was born in Wortley near Barnsley in 1639, was finally captured whilst asleep in The Three Houses Inn in 1684. Nevison had reputedly ridden from Kent to York in 15 hours in 1676 to establish an alibi when his victim recognised him. This feat was subsequently ascribed to Dick Turpin. Nevison was executed in York for the murder of a constable after his capture in Sandal. George Scholey was born in The Cock & Bottle Inn on Barnsley Road, Sandal in 1758. He subsequently moved to London becoming successful in business and the Lord Mayor of London in 1812. George did not forget his home village though and when he died bequeathed £10,000; half for the poor and the other half to the Sandal Endowed School where he had studied as a child.
In 1743 there were 360 families living in the parish. An old packhorse route led north
Barnsley Road
– south along Manygates Lane which wasn’t superseded until 1759 when the Sheffield to Leeds turnpike road was completed along the route of the present day A61. The many inns along Barnsley Road prospered servicing stage coaches and their weary passengers. As the 18th century drew to a close life for the villagers of Sandal began to change irrevocably. First large areas of common land in the parish were enclosed and then the Industrial Revolution ushered in mass manufacturing and rapid transport systems. Wakefield was already a significant inland port by the beginning of the 18th century and work on the Aire and Calder Navigation progressively improved access to the sea. In 1799 the Barnsley Canal opened which ran a mile east of Sandal to join the Calder at Heath. It was built to transport coal from the expanding coalfields around Barnsley. Collieries and stone quarries were also opening locally at Crigglestone, Walton and Newmillerdam.
From the 1840’s railways accelerated the pace of growth and the city of Wakefield began to spread south across Belle Vue and Agbrigg towards Sandal. The area was rapidly built up with terraced housing, churches, schools, shops and workplaces for the growing working classpopulation, while Sandal began to gain a reputation as a fashionable middle class suburb. In 1866 it got its own railway station. Between 1801 and 1901 Sandal’s population increased from 765 to 6,843. In 1904 an electric tramline into Wakefield opened so Sandal residents could more easily commute into Wakefield to work … a pattern that has largely survived into the present day.
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