Doncaster Ramblers: Langold Circuit

Thursday 25th April, at our usual start time of 10.00am fourteen of us were ready to start this morning's walk of 5.5 miles on a chilly day. We started with a brief history of Langold Country Park, who's history goes back over 200 years. It was originally designed in the 1750s for Langold Hall, which was never built. In the 1920s coal mining developed and in 1927 the Firbeck Colliery Company bought the park as a leisure facility for the Langold miners, principally for fishing. In 1946 the coal industry was nationalised and the NCB expanded the leisure facilities in the park. A children’s swimming pool and a bandstand were added. The first Langold Gala was held in 1929 with accounts claiming that 10,000 visited the Park. The Park came particularly well known and popular for its swimming. The British Long Distance Swimming Association Championship were traditionally held at the Lake. There were children's events in the bathing pool and demonstrations by the country’s top swimmers, also synchronised life-saving displays and comedy items by Swimming Club members. Spectacular stunts included explosions. Other stunts included a submarine explosion, a trapeze artist, ‘The Great Alganso’ a tight rope walker, as well as Jack Revel, known as Mr Langold Lake who was renowned for his dare devil dive from the 35’ diving board into a patch of burning petrol, performed until 1978. The lido removed in 2013 and new play facilities added in 2014.

We left the park and walked through Dyscarr Wood, notable at the moment for the masses of wild garlic. Some open countryside walking led us to a short section of the Ivy Lodge Plantation before crossing the B6463 - Lamb Lane - and taking the gentle descent of Salt Hill. This track was adjacent to Firbeck Hall, which has a fascinating history. Built in 1594 by William West, a lawyer of Moorgate Hall, Rotherham, it passed through many hands before an attempt to sell it in 1909 failed and it was rented out. During WW1 it was a base for Belgian refugees. In 1924, when it was being rented by Mr Albert Orlando Peech (chairman of Steel, Peech and Tozer) a serious fire broke out and the building became a ruin. In 1935 an auction was planned but Mr Cyril Nicholson, a Sheffield stockbroker, bought the 1500 acre estate.

Firbeck Hall will forever be remembered for the celebrated period between 1935 and 1939. Although Cyril Nicholson had bought the estate he had secretly been making plans with two business associates. The hall retained its outward appearance but its old interiors were, by modern standards, inexplicably destroyed. The old panelled walls gave way to brightly covered walls and the interior rooms were covered almost entirely with mirrors. The three men created the Firbeck Hall Club, with mirrors running the whole length of the dining room, a state-of-the-art lighting system, furniture deigned by a fashionable Finish architect. The inside was a triumph, winning acclaim from specialist journals including Architecture Illustrated. “Where once there were darkly-panelled rooms there are now dance halls with maple floors, cocktail bars with stainless steel furniture, dining rooms upholstered with its latest Zebra pattern coverings, grill rooms and billiard rooms.” In the grounds 100’ outdoor heated swimming pool, tennis courts, an 18-hole golf course and championship standard squash courts. Most significant was the new aerodrome, where the rich and famous flew in, including the Prince of Wales and Amy Johnson. Vogue magazine published an entire supplement, featuring ‘beautiful 1930s-clad women posing through the club’s vast grounds. Older readers might remember band leaders Henry Hall and Carroll Gibbons, who performed at Firbeck when the BBC transmitted its weekly Saturday show “Late Night Dance Music”.

And then the war. Firbeck Hall was taken over by the Sheffield Joint Hospitals Board and the dwindling country club shunted into the nearby Lake House. It became an annexe of the Sheffield Royal Infirmary for the duration while the aerodrome was converted into RAF Firbeck, comprising four squadrons from 1940 to 1944. The dream had died and in 1943 Cyril Nicholson put Firbeck Hall up for sale. There were no takers for the estate and it would take until 1945 for the Miners’ Welfare Commission to acquire it as a rehabilitation centre. In 1984 it transferred to the Trent Regional Health Authority as a convalescence home for industrial injuries but this eventually closed in 1990. Rhona worked there in the late ‘80s. 27-years-later, Firbeck Hall remained derelict, eerily lost and in the most precarious condition. It was bought by successive owners in 1996 and 2010 before being bought by Ashley Wildsmith in 2014. A residential development was then built, with exclusive apartments in the Hall and detached houses around it.

We stopped for our break opposite the church and beside a recently erected village sign, showing a representation of a race course which existed nearby where the first St Leger horse race was held, prior to it moving to its current site in Doncaster. The other side of the sign shows a representation of RAF Firbeck, which took over the airfield during the war. After our break we left the village to be met with a huge ploughed field with an un-reinstated right of way. This was not a welcome site but we all stumbled across it to reach Lamb Lane again. A short section took us to the outskirts of Letwell, from where we continued broadly southwards until we reached the stream which feeds the Langold lakes, when we turned broadly eastwards to walk along the base of the original colliery tip and back to the Lake, where we were saddened to see many, many dead fish before we reached the car park at just after 12.30. Thanks to Dave and Dougie for back-marking.