Our street was built mainly in the 1870s and 80s. It is named after Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt (1827-1904) who entered Parliament as Liberal member for Oxford in 1868 and from that date devoted himself to politics. He was Home Secretary 1880-5, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1886 and 1892-5. Sir William's son did even better, Lewis, 1st Viscourt Harcourt (1863-1922) was Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1910-15 and got a whole town in Nigeria named after him – Port Harcourt – now a city of 4m population!

The history of the dams

One of the joys of living on Harcourt Road is the view of the lake in Crookes Valley Park. Ever wondered why it is there? It was built as part of a whole flight of reservoirs to provide drinking water for the growing town of Sheffield back in the 18th century. For centuries before the only water supply other than the rivers was the Barkers Pool situated in town near the top of Fargate.

The lake we know today was the largest – known as the Great Dam, but between 1735 and 1790 nine others were constructed – five in the area either side of Northumberland Road now occupied by the University sports facilities and the old Glass Technology site, and four in what is now the Ponderosa.

The rural Crookes Valley with its stream, part of the common land of Crookes Moor, was turned into a series of terraces containing the water. Later in the 1830s they were joined by the Hadfield Dam on Crookes, now decked over by football fields and linked to the Redmires Reservoirs. The Dam House was built in the 1780's originally for the Company Secretary of the Waterworks. In the 1870s the area around the dams was built up and many houses especially on Marlborough Road and Whitham Road still have large rear windows obviously built to take advantage of the spectacular watery views.

The whole area was taken over by the Sheffield Corporation who bought out the unpopular Water Company in the 1880s but remained out of bounds to the public until the 1950's when Crookes Valley Park was created, the nine smaller dams filled in (allegedly with blitz rubble) and the Great Dam altered to create a boating lake.

Today the Great Dam is no longer used for boating. Owing to its considerable depth (forty feet in the middle) it is home for some truly immense fish especially carp.

The moors beneath the pavements

Crookesmoor and Commonside

Quite a few street names in our area give us interesting insights into their history. Crookesmoor, the name of both the main road and of the general suburb or quarter, commemorates quite large area of common moorland which from the middle ages to the early C18th stretched from Western Bank to Broomhill and to Netherthorpe and including the Crookes Valley. Common land was a kind of public property on which local people were allowed to graze animals, gather wood, hunt and have fun. From the early 18th century these areas of common land were gradually taken away by hundreds of 'Enclosure Acts' whereby Parliament authorised a number of bigwigs to become the new proprietors by fencing off the area and developing it.

Much of Crookes Moor Common was taken by the new Sheffield Waterworks Company to build their 9 reservoirs down the Crookes Valley from 1730 to 1790 and this probably was not popular with local people. Commonside obviously marked one edge of the common area. From 1711 to 1781 there was also a racecourse, presumably, looking at the geography, along the flatter part of Crookesmoor Road.

Mushroom Lane

Mushroom Lane also arose from the common as it was at one time possible to gain squatters rights if you could build dwelling on common land during one night and have smoke coming from a chimney by the morning. These houses were sometimes called 'Mushroom Halls' as they appeared like mushrooms and sometimes associated with other not strictly legal activities. It seems that there were a number of such dwellings in that area.

Crookes, The Nook and Barber Road

The name Crookes is an ancient village name, variously spelled as Crokes or Crokis and possibly deriving from the Viking word 'krokr' meaning a nook or corner of land. This is interesting because one of the oldest street names in our area is the Nook, named after a farm said to have been on a cleared area of the Moor. For many years in the 18th and 19th it was farmed by the Barber family for several generations and sold by their heirs in 1869 for development. The construction of Harcourt Road started a year later. The Barber Family are commemorated in Barber Road.