Welcome to the Totley History Group Website

We hope you enjoy your visit to our site which celebrates the history of Yorkshire's most southerly village. Totley is mentioned in the Domesday Book and has a rich and varied past. Its story includes millionaire industrialists, farm labourers, heroes and scoundrels. This website is intended to introduce you to these people and the community's past and hopefully inspire you to look more closely into the history of our village.

Totley History Group started out on a cold January night in 2008 in Totley library. A group of Totley residents had been interested in starting up a history circle for some time when Brian Edwards the local historian mentioned that he wanted to leave his vast collection of Totley history memorabilia for people to access in the future.

                                                           Brian Edwards (1937-2015)

He had been working on various projects for a number of years and had catalogued most of his work but was keen to pass this knowledge on to the people of Totley. He was also keen that we should continue to research various topics such as the trades carried out in Totley, the rolling mills around the area and links with the other villages around Totley.

He offered to help us to get the group up and running for the first year and point us in certain directions, but then unfortunately Brian was taken seriously ill and had to withdraw his offer.

By this time we were all fired up and raring to go, and had a healthy membership, so we were determined to carry on and have been learning ever since. We are now into our fifteenth year. 

We had lots of advice from existing history groups such as Dore who gave us an interest in oral history as we have some great characters in Totley who can provide us with their memories of life in Totley over the years. We subsequently applied for and were successful in securing funding for our own oral history equipment and the project is well under way. 

We published our first booklet on the Totley War Memorial WW1 soldiers in October 2011 and our second on Totley Rise in 2015. Both booklets have subsequently been reprinted several times. A third booklet about the Dore & Totley Minesweeping Trawlers Comforts Fund was published in 2016.

We have regular speakers on various topics and have been on several visits and walks to local places of interest, our current list of walks, visits and speakers are available on this website. We also have stands at a number of local fairs and shows including the Sheffield Family History Fair, Dronfield Hall Barn Local History Fair and Totley Show. 

We have aquired a valuable resource of photographs and postcards of old Totley some of which you will also be able to access on line. We are always interested in welcoming new members who can come and just listen or get involved with projects if they wish.

In response to numerous requests we have recently extended our area of coverage beyond the old Totley township to include the whole of the ecclesiastical parish of St. John the Baptist, Abbeydale. The latter includes parts of Totley Rise, Totley Brook and the whole of Bradway. 

We usually meet every 4th Wednesday of the month in Totley Library at 7.30pm and a full programme of events is available on this website. 

Membership is £5 per year and we charge £3 to non-members and £2 to members each meeting which helps to pay for the speakers and the website.

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