The Friendship Inn
Stocksbridge
Thank you to everyone who has contributed photographs so far - please get in touch if you have any that you think would be of interest to others.
The Friendship Inn, Manchester Road, Stocksbridge. Click on a photo to enlarge it and for more information.
By local artist Robert Penistone, who was inspired to paint this from reading my book!
The boys outside the pub look as if they have come from the pit. There are three balls hanging above the shop next to the pub, the sign of the pawnbroker. On the opposite side of the road is W. Hoyle's shop at the bottom of Johnson Street. Picture Sheffield reference: s11823
A house and cart waits outside the pub, a man, woman and dog walk towards the camera, and it looks as if a cart is being unloaded on the opposite side of the road.
The garage sign was advertising Knowles' garage. Opposite the Friendship are shops, now demolished, and the corner of Johnson Street. There is both a horse-drawn carriage and a motor car in this photograph.
A motor lorry looks to be making a delivery.
Amelia Herbert’s doorway in the foreground. Her husband Joseph was an invalid (1891 census); he died in 1895. Her son Randal Herbert (James Randall Herbert) later ran it, although his occupation was always given as engineer. Randal lived in this house next to the pub from being a 9 year old child in 1881 to at least 1939, a period of over 58 years. Picture Sheffield reference: t05737
Charlie Lewis's landau in front of Randal Herbert’s shop. This became the TSB Bank in later years.
The photograph shows the Friendship with its relatively new façade of 1903. Hunter’s shop (later Smith Wilkinson’s) can be seen on one side, and in the foreground is a draper’s shop (established 1884) and two of the three balls of the pawnbroker’s shop can just be seen. It was in these two buildings (originally cottages owned by the first landlord George Batty) that the Co-operative Society began life.
Photo credit: Ian Sutton
Photo credit: Ian Sutton
View of Stocksbridge from a chimney showing the back of the Friendship (far right, with bay window). All the houses in the foreground have been demolished. Also shown are Victoria Street and Common Piece.
From the Sheffield Independent 9 February 1934; this is from the supplement to this paper advertising the Sheffield, Rotherham & District Licensed Victuallers’ Association to celebrate their 100th anniversary / centenary. Tom Batty was a member.
Postscript to the book:
Each pub has been researched to around 1939 but I would like to add the following information to the chapter on The Friendship Hotel. After the death of Tom Batty on the 15th May 1939, the pub was bought by Truswell's Brewery. The first landlord they installed was George Henry Rogerson. He and his wife Florence had a son called Joseph, who was born in 1915. Young Joe was a fairly well-known golfer, who played at the Sitwell Park Golf Club in Rotherham and played with the County team. He helped his father in the running of the pub, including keeping the books, and when the 1939 Register was taken at the start of WW2 he was recorded as also working as an ambulance driver. At some point he joined the R.A.F. Volunteer Reserve, serving with 153 Maintenance Unit. Sadly, Joe did not survive the war. He was captured by the Japanese in 1942 and held in a Prisoner of War Camp in Java. Joseph Rogerson, prisoner no. 797, died of bacillary dysentery on the 28th May 1943 (as did a great many other men, it being a highly contagious disease). He is commemorated on the Stocksbridge Clock Tower War Memorial.
​
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records Joseph Rogerson, no. 952920, as being buried in Grave 4.A.1. at Ambon War Cemetery, Indonesia. He was a Leading Aircraftsman with the R.A.F. Volunteer Reserve although some records say he was a Private and others a Lance Corporal. He was 28 years old.
One 98 page document I have seen, now declassified, has 96 pages listing all the deaths of men from the allied countries in the Java P.O.W. camp from 1942- 28th June 1945 . Common causes of death included dysentery of various forms, beriberi, malaria, malnutrition. A great many were listed as drowned, but I don’t know where or how. I would say that the majority of deaths were caused by dysentery. Other causes of death were “broken neck,” “bayoneted in chest and stomach, sudden death,” “bayoneted and skull fractured,” “death by air raid,” “syphilis,” “leprosy,” “beriberi and bayonet wound through the forehead,” as well as cancer and heart failure.
Below: a record for Joe Rogerson from the Japanese Index Cards of Allied Prisoners, ref. WO 345/44
