South Yorkshire Times September 7, 1946

Village Had Two Pinfolds
Former Denaby Resident Answers Parish Council Query.

Here is news for Old Denaby Parish Council. For some months they have been seeking the whereabouts of the site of the old village pinfold. No references have they been able to find on any of the current parish maps, but on Monday a “South Yorkshire Times” reporter was supplied with news of 2 pinfolds by an 81-year-old former resident of the parish, Mrs Emily Hammond, wife of Mr Arthur Hammond, March Dene, Chapel Lane, Conisborough, who for many years was cashier for Messrs. Kilner, Bros., Ltd. the Conisborough glass bottle manufacturers.

Those hunters!

Pinfold No, 1 – Brickyard field; Pinfold No 2 the top of boat Lane.

“They were used when I was a girl,” Mrs Hammond explained, for putting stray cattle in, and their owners used to pay about a shilling to get them out. I do not know who received the money, but I expect it went from something in the parish. The fox hunters would come and leave the gates open, and it was very handy to have some place for people to put your cattle. We have had to fetch ours from Hooton Roberts more than once,”

Both pinfold’s consisted of stone walls Mrs Hammond said, about the size of an average sized kitchen. In the Brickyard field there used to be a hedge from which they were in the habit of getting their blackberries and in the corner was the pinfold. Mrs Hammond is a member of the well-known Bennett family of Old Denaby, and a sister of the grand old English gentleman, Mr Harry Bennett, whose death during the war was greatly lamented in the village. It is 57 years since Mrs Hammond left Denaby on her marriage, but the bright eyes of this grand, lively old lady – she does not look a day over 60, and, she says, she does not feel a day over 60 either – still sparkle when she speaks of the stone house beside the main road of the village in which she was born.

Reminiscence.

“In the old days there used to be a rose tree in the front. There is still part of it there,” she said pointing to a photographic reproduction of the house, “and at the back we had a French lilac. Mother always insisted in having the house yellow washed every year. In Denaby Ward, there was a casket of bluebells and primroses, and what a picture it used to be. Two gameskeepers were kept in Old Denaby then, and only the people of the village, the farmers and the farm labourers were allowed to go there. Denaby pit had not been sunk them. You can have your Clifton, but I don’t think there was a grander place in the district in those days than Old Denaby.”

Mrs Hammond well remembers the coming of Denaby Main colliery and told a good story against her brother, Mr Harry Bennett. At the farm of her father, Mr James Bennett, they had a well laden cherry tree, if the fruit of which was a source of pride to the family. One day Mr Harry Bennett came out of the house and noticed a Denaby Main boy apparently very interested in the tree, “Oh,” said Mr Bennett to himself “I must keep this lad away.” He did, but all the time the boys companion was up the tree helping himself for all he was worth. “My brother did laugh when he found that he had been taken in,” Mrs Hammond exclaimed.