News - Could Scots king be buried under the Post Office? (Doncaster)

A SCOTTISH king who ruled nearly 700 years ago could be buried beneath a Post Office in Doncaster town centre.

That’s the amazing verdict of historians and archaeologists who believe one time King of the Scots Edward Balliol could have his last resting place in the town.

The news comes hot on the heels of the discovery of the remains of English King Richard III beneath a car park in Leicester in a story that has gripped the globe.

And the news that we could be queuing up for books of stamps on the grave of a monarch of the glens adds further fuel to speculation that Doncaster could be part of Scotland.

Last year, the Free Press exclusively revealed how our town was seized by the Scots nearly 900 years ago - and may never have officially been handed back.

Now experts have discovered that Edward Balliol, who ruled north of the border from 1332-36, died in Doncaster, with speculation mounting about where his bones could be.

Peter Robinson, museums officer in human history at Doncaster Museum said: “We know that Edward Balliol lived here for a while and died here, but the location of where he was buried, and where his body is, are now are uncertain.
“It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack but not impossible for someone with the means and interest to be able to conduct enough research into where he might be.”

Edward, son of John Balliol, briefly ruled Scotland during the late Middle Ages, before being de-throned in 1336.

In later years, he lived in the Wheatley area of Doncaster - possibly in the medieval Wheatley Hall, roughly where the Parklands Sports and Social Club now lies on Wheatley Hall Road, and died here in 1367.

But that’s where the trail runs cold. There are no burial records and the location of his grave remains unknown - but Peter says there a number of locations in Doncaster where he could rest, including underneath the town’s main Post Office in Priory Place.

He said: “The current Post Office is built on top of a huge burial ground and at that time, that’s where a lot of eminent figures would have been laid to rest. At that time, the area was home to a large Carmelite friary and that’s one of the places where Edward could be buried.”

However, there are a number of other locations scattered across the borough where Edward’s remains could be - including Doncaster Minster and Conisbrough Castle.

Added Peter: “His mother was Isabella de Warenne, and the de Warenne family owned Conisbrough Castle so that’s another place that would fit the bill.

“One of the other most obvious locations would be the Minster as again, a lot of key figures would have been buried there.”

But like Richard III, whose remains were unearthed from beneath a car park, Edward too could be another monarch who shares his final resting place with scores of vehicles on a daily basis.

For another potential burial site could be the Greyfriars car park, sandwiched between the Church View Tesco supermarket and St George’s Bridge - also the site of a friary - hence the name - in bygone days.

Said Peter: “There is no archaeological evidence to say he is actually buried in Doncaster. There has never been any excavation which has turned up anything that suggests exactly where he may be buried.

“He may well have been taken and buried elsewhere, or even back to Scotland - this may just be one of those mysteries that remains forever unsolved.”

Historian Michael Brown of St Andrew’s University and an expert in Scottish history, said that Edward was not a key figure in the nation’s past, unlike Robert The Bruce and William Wallace.

He said: “He’s not really well known and there hasn’t been a great deal of research about the Balliol family in the past.

“We know that he was ejected from Scotland and spent time living in estates and castles in Yorkshire and the north east.

“Edward was never fully accepted as the Scottish king and he had to fight hard to be recognised as such. He was very much regarded as a puppet of the English king at the time and we do know he was regarded as a not very popular figure.”

Mr Brown added that the monarch was however regarded by historians as an “effective and energetic leader” and in his later years, broke into the Queen’s park near Knaresborough where he was caught poaching deer.

“He was certainly rough around the edges by all accounts and spent his retirement in and around the Doncaster area before his death at Wheatley.

The news strengthens Doncaster’s claim to be an enclave of Scotland with the town under Scottish rule for 21 years from 1136 to 1157. But while the town was officially signed over between the kings of England and Scotland, it seems it was never formally handed back.

Last year, tourism bosses were hopeful the revelation would spark a Tartan Army invasion.

Tourism manager Colin Joy said: “I love it - it is an intriguing story. It would be wonderful if Doncaster had its own answer to Richard III.”

From: http://www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk/lifestyle/features/could-scots-king-be-buried-under-the-post-office-1-5407840

Ha ha!

Article - Jewel in the town factory (Doncaster)

Recently I came across a brochure A Jewel in the Town published in 1995 by Dupont (formerly ICI, British Nylon Spinners and Bemberg) detailing the firm’s history in Doncaster. So, today I thought we’d delve into it and look back at some of the firm’s fascinating history.

The Dupont factory was built on land which was once part of Wheatley Hall. The first company to occupy the Wheatley Hall Road site was Bemberg Limited, a German Rayon producer in the late 1920s. When the Second World War broke out the German management were given 36 hours to get out or be interned. The factory then fell under the auspices of Enemy Property and became known as British Bemberg.

The factory with its 200ft chimney and north-south axis was a useful landmark for enemy aircraft and had to be camouflaged during the war.

After the cessation of hostilities the demand for rayon started to decline. One of the reasons for this was that a team of research chemists had constructed a polyamide based on adipic acid and hexamethylene diamine. The first fibre based on this new substance was nylon.

British Bemberg went into receivership in June 1953. A year later British Nylon Spinners (BNS) – owned 50/50 by ICI and Courtaulds – saw the potential of the Wheatley Hall site for nylon production. Buildings were cleared of the rayon machinery and gutted.

The most difficult job for the main contractors –McAlpine – was the demolition of the copper sulphate settling tanks. Explosives were used to fracture the concrete shell.

Nylon spinning at the Wheatley Hall Road site started on June 1, 1955 on gravity units transferred from Pontypool in Wales. Six to eight weeks before start-up a technical team arrived from Pontypool to train the handful of new employees.

On July 29, 1957 a site expansion programme was announced. Production climbed steadily with Doncaster producing about half the company’s output of yarn and staple fibre.

There was a strong union representation on the site during the 1950s. In 1958 the number of employees rose from 1,100 to 1,700.

Employees worked a bonus system. If a machine was set up incorrectly it affected the bonus of the whole team.

Bonuses were also affected by the amount of waste and ingenious methods were used in an attempt to hide it.

The 1960s was a decade of change for the factory. In 1965 ICI took over Courtaulds’ share of BNS and on January 1, 1966 formed ICI Fibres Limited. In the same year the Doncaster site experienced its first redundancies with 600 people losing their jobs. In the 1960s, the workforce was reduced to 3,500.

The 1970s was a decade of unrest with a national three- day week causing severe restrictions in electricity supply. Doncaster imported surplus power from the Wilton factory to keep the plant running. ICI Fibres Limited became Fibres Division of Imperial Chemical Industries on January 1, 1972.

Inside the factory in the 1970s the Autefa presses and high throughput Fleissner staple lines were installed.

In 1971, 600 weekly and 150 monthly staff were made redundant. The AUEW organised a six-week strike against reorganisation after redundancies. The 1980s saw a further reduction in staff from 1,513 to about 1,200. The start of the decade saw the first PC on the site in the finance department – it was a Commodore and stored data and programs on audio tape.

On the production side Type 50 single-stage spinning was installed and Type 14S staple machines were uprated to give higher throughput with metered spin finish. Old redundant machinery was ripped out and the plant tidied up to make way for future investment.

The business concentrated on core activities and many support tasks were transferred to contractors.

The beginning of the 1990s was a very unsettling time for the Doncaster site, first because of the threatened takeover of ICI by Lord Hanson and then the uncertainty surrounding the sale to Dupont.

But from July 1993 when Dupont bought the ICI Fibres business there was a £2m investment in the boilerhouse and a £100,000 facelift of the spinning tower building.

The number of employees was reduced from 850 in 1993 to 630 in 1995, due partly to the loss of carpet staple and BCF and partly because of the re-engineering project introduced to restore the nylon business to financial health.

On June 1, 1995 the Doncaster site celebrated 40 years of nylon production.

The nylon fibre produced at Doncaster but closed not long afterwards.

Over the years the nylon fibre produced at the Doncaster site went into the manufacture of many industrial and household goods.

They included inter-linings for suits, shirts and leisure wear, fabrics for upholstery, curtains and clothing, machine and hand knitting yarns, tennis balls, paint rollers, pan scourers, sewing threads, battery separators, conveyor belts, tarpaulins, car seat belts, tyres and automotive air springs.

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/community/nostalgia/jewel_in_the_town_factory_1_3461645

Article - The splendour that was once Wheatley Hall (Doncaster)

To a generation - or even two - of Doncaster people the name Wheatley Hall will only be familiar when followed by the word Road.

So it may come as a surprise to many that there was once a magnificent mansion of that name which stood in fine grounds just north of Thorne Road which was the seat of Sir William Henry Charles Cooke-Bart, Lord of the Manor and principal landowner of the day.

Strangely, despite it being a most impressive residence, complete with heavy stone work, four stories high and containing many intricate windows (a popular attraction of the time), it was built in 1680 close to the River Don.

This was low-lying land and flooding occurred with frequent regularity causing damage and inconvenience throughout the area. It made the whole of the area something of a dismal outlook and could have been easily avoided if the house had been consructed just a couple of hundred yards south of its original site.

It would also have provided the residents with a superb view and made it unecessary to pipe drinking water half a mile along dirty lead pipes. On the good side, to the south of the house stood stately grounds and some of the finest oak trees in the whole country which created an area of 103 acres later known as Wheatley Park.

The building itself remained the seat of the Cooke family until around 1914 when the latest lord, Sir William Cooke, moved out to be nearer the colliery he owned in neighbouring Bentley.

The hall was later leased to Wheatley Golf Club, who used the ground floor as a club house and sub-let the upper two storeys as flats.

By 1933, upkeep of the by now deteriorating building had become too much for the golfers, who moved to their current home on Armthorpe Road. The estate, much of which had been converted into a golf course, was eventually purchased by Doncaster Corporation for housing, whilst the crumbling Jacobean Hall itself, like many other impressive local structures, was demolished in 1938.

The site of the Hall was then converted to industrial use and occupied by International Harvesters then the McCormick International Tractor factory complex and at the same time the estate disappeared beneath the Wheatley Park housing estate.

In 1884 the Wheatley Estate itself was created by the laying out of St. Mary’s Road and Beckett Road, it was a slow start but the growth of Wheatley as a district began in real earnest with the creating of Avenue Road, the Highfield Estate, Kings Road and Queens Road, together with Highfield Road.

Other roads followed and by 1898 almost all the land to Avenue Road was in the the hands of the builders.

This land was higher than the rest as well as being well drained with good soil and was ideal for residential development, and that’s just what happened.

So much so that by 1898 the population had increased from 183 inhabitants to over 3,000 with more than 675 houses.

The area is now a thriving and bustling mixture of housing, factories and car showrooms, a real change to its original use all those years ago.

From: http://www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk/community/nostalgia/the_splendour_that_was_once_wheatley_hall_1_3170944