Welcome to the Thorpe Hesley Village Website

The village of Thorpe Hesley is located about 5 miles North West of Rotherham, 6 miles North East of Sheffield on the East side of the M1 motorway at junction 35.

Its population of just over 11,200 people is served by no less than 6 public houses; The Masons Arms, Red Lion Inn, The Horse and Tiger, The Blacksmiths Arms, The Ball Inn and The Sportsman, a post office, petrol station, 2 general grocery stores, a fish and chip shop, Chinese takeaway, beauty salons and tack shop to name a few.

Due to historical boundaries, the village lies within two townships; Wentworth and Kimberworth.  The name is believed to originate from the old Norse word ‘Thorpe’ meaning off-shoot from a pre-existing settlement and ‘Hesley’ from the nearby Hesley Hall in Ecclesfield.

Prior to 1840 there was no church within the village which probably led to the rise of Methodism.  A plaque found at the green on Thorpe Street details the fact that “…John Wesley preached many times between the years 1742 – 1786”  There are two examples of chapels one disused on Chapelfield Lane, the second converted for residential use on Brook Hill.  The Holy Trinity church was built in 1840 funded by two local landowners, Earl Fitzwilliam of Wentworth Woodhouse who bought the land and Countess of Effingham of Thundercliffe Grange who funded the school beside it.  In 2007 an new community building housing a public library was built.

In 1977, a two-part BBC ‘Play for Today’ TV production, The Price of Coal was filmed at the now closed colliery.  The 1976 Disney film ‘The Littlest Horse Thieves’ or its UK title ‘Escape from the Dark’ was supposed to have had its location filming done in parts of the village.

Other nearby towns and villages include Ecclesfield and Chapeltown, Wentworth, Harley and its nearest neighbour Scholes village.  For the past few years residents of Thorpe Hesley and Scholes in the form of the Scholes and Thorpe Action Group (STAG) have been fighting the local authority and owners of the land between the two to prevent a large residential development being built which would effectively merge both villages into one.  Although various planning applications have been overturned up to a central government level, the fight continues to preserve the identities of both villages.

This site welcomes all users either resident in the village or elsewhere.  Please feel free to take a look around, you may even have some information to offer in the village forum.