Woodsetts in 1900

The following extract from the Leeds Mercury details Woodsetts as it was in 1900.

In " The Humour of Yorkshire Nomenclature," Locksmiths might do well at Loxley, and paviours should find plenty of work at Langsett or Woodsetts. Yet they know nothing about wood pavings at Woodsetts; if ever they mend their roads at all, it is certain that they use common stones broken by hammer at the roadside. There is nothing specially interesting about the village; historically, it is barren; I saw nothing really beautiful unless it were cherry trees in full blossom. Once on a time everybody here had either a bit od land of his own, or helped to cultivate somebody else's. Lads are now-a-days employed to do the ploughing, or men at lad's wages. I was told that only three farm labourers survived at Woodsetts, all the rest have betaken themselves to the colliery at Shireoaks for the sake of superior money. Little holdings of a few acres flourish much better in proportion than the farms of landed proprietors or the estates of small farmers. Where seven or eight hands used to be employed, only two or three are employed to-day. There are but few farmers in the immediate district who cannot do all their work unassisted. Woodsetts, however, is no sufferer by the famous golf links on Lindrick Common, in this parish. Lindrick, be it noted, is a Nottinghamshire name, the two villages of Carlton-in-Lindrick lying some three miles to the east, just beyond the Yorkshire border-line. The territory of Le Morthen, with its two villages of Laughton and Brampton, now indisputably in Yorkshire, also belonged to the county of Nottingham at one time. It is the boast of the Woodsetts folk that the Lindrick Common links are the best in Yorkshire, a vast amount of good money having been expended on their three hundred acres. Half the farm-houses in the village are now taking in golfers from Sheffield, Retford, and Worksop for the summer. These gentlemen have well stocked purses. The Sunday offertories at the church are said to be materially improved, and the Butchers' Arms Inn profits more than a little.

If I were fated to attend Woodsetts Church I should want to sit in the front row of the west gallery, and nowhere else. The edifice is commonplace to a degree, dating only from 1841, but it must nevertheless be pleasant to sit up there on a bright Sunday morning in summer. You can look through the east window, which the few straggling leaves of a spruce tree tap ever and anon as the wizard fingers, and see the sleepy hamlet's street beyond, with its red roofed-farms, and intermixed fields, meadows and woods. No kaleidoscope could be so interesting; but if the window were of stained-glass there would be no view at all. Through the nearest south-west window you can see the graveyard spruces and yews, and the dandelions glaring defiantly at heaven from the sod. Through a north window you behold a paddock in which hayricks stand or barrows lie topsy-turvy at peace, and a dog barking in his kennel. The two black and white tablets on the south wall are the only reading matter displayed within this yellow-washed little edifice - one to Leonard Hobson and the other to , both of the reverend black cloth. There is no communion table worth mentioning, and the reredos is merely a green wall-curtain. The common wood furniture is coated with light yellow varnish.

Outside the churchyard is a cottage garden where beautiful cherry trees are in full bloom. The churchyard is essentially gloomy with its cordon of spruces and yews; while a large tree of the weeping variety shrouds a cumbrous box-tomb in perpetual darkness. Sorrow is evidently here; a sorrow unmitigated by the promises which should rejoice the faithful: and the rain drops from the overhanging boughs like tricks of time from an old clock. The consecrated enclosure is is not old as yet; but many of ite headstones are droopingly inclined from the perpendicular, as if ashamed of the lies they tell. There are few flowers on the grass at present (month of may) except forget-me-nots; but they have all gone wild over the stories they tell, and stepped out of bounds, to straggle over graves where they are not wanted in a disorderly fashion. Opposite the entrance gate is a somewhat ornamental stone, erected in memory of Henry Inman and his wife, farmers. I think it far more estimable than the cant and blarney of stonemason's verse, which, little as scribbling tourists have suspected, usually emanates from a pattern-book, and not from the poet of the mourning family. Within a little arched recess near the top of the stone is sculptured in high relief every farming implement that could be crammed in. There are sheaves of wheat, a plough, a harrow, a scythe, a sickle, a hay-rake, a potato-shovel, etc. The flat sky-dome above is effectively bleached by the weather.

Another stone to William Wilson is inscribed

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