South Yorkshire Times, February 9th, 1934
Village Worthies
Mr Harry Bennett – Old Denaby
Some Memories
Mr. Harry Bennett of Old Denaby, though not the oldest resident of that riverside hamlet, is perhaps the most interesting, for he has packed a good deal into his seventy-five years. He was born in the village in a cottage, now demolished, at the top of the Ferry Lane. It was demolished when he was five years old, and he moved to his present home, the farm house on the left of the road to Denaby Main. Some of the stone from the demolished cottage was used in the erection of the farm house to which his father moved. He attended the village school and afterwards the National School at Mexborough before settling down to work for, and ultimately succeed, his father. He has been farming ever since and is still at it, though farming is “not what it was.”
He has a vivid recollection of the Sheffield Flood (March 1864) though he was only five or six years old at the time. He remembers being shown a quantity of household brushes which a gamekeeper named Jagger had collected near the river. An elder brother had gone to Sheffield that morning and at Tinsley saw a woman sweeping flood water out of a house that had never been touched by flood before. In Sheffield in a public-house called the “Twelve o’Clock,” his brother saw twelve drowned bodies laid out, and in Blonk Street, traffic was obstructed by masses of debris.
Mr. Bennett also remembers the Denaby Main pit being sunk in 1868 by Pope and Pearson of Lofthouse. He remembers the old pottery and the bone mill that succeeded it, on a site opposite the colliery. He remembers the brickworks that used to be worked at Old Denaby by William Eyre and his sons, Jim and Jack, the latter losing an arm while working a clay mill. He remembers the disastrous fire in the old wooden headgear at the Denaby Main Colliery, and the destruction by fire on a Mexborough feast Saturday of another old wooden structure, “Gray’s Bridge,” which he saw collapse into the river.
Mr. Bennet has always been a steady supporter of the work in the church in the village, and has been warden of the little village church for over thirty years. Among other things he is warden of the Denaby Wood, still one of the beauty spots of the district. Mr. Bennett has always been fond of field sports, particularly shooting. He has some interesting old relics, but the two he treasures most are a wooden effigy of an old villager, Jacob Hartley, done by the famous sculptor Robert Glassby, of Mexborough, an old truncheon which his father, the last of the village constables, used. It is inscribed ‘Denaby 1809’ and bears the arms of George III. Mr. Bennett himself did constabulary duty during the war. He must have crossed the river ferry to Mexborough many thousands of times, but that at least twice he dispensed with the boat and crossed on the rope and once in a fog, he walked into the river.