The Haggs Wood Estate
On the south side
of Stainforth there is a strip of land which has the railway
to one side and the greyhound stadium to the other. This
is known as Haggs Wood. I remember the Haggs Wood estate
from the 1960s, when there were just two or three families
living there, occupying converted railways wagons with
wooden sides and oilcloth or corrugated tin roofs. Haggs
Wood consisted mainly of a few small meadow-like fields,
which ended where it met marshland about 800 yards from
Station Road.
I have searched various
sources to try and find out how the area acquired its
name; it would have been nice to find an ancient tale
of a snaggletoothed old hag who dispensed potions and
suchlike to the local populace from within a moss covered
ramshackle old house deep within the woods. Unfortunately,
the more probable explanation is much more mundane.
A couple of books in the local history dept. at Doncaster's
Waterdale library suggest that the word "Haggs"
may be a misspelling of the word "hogs". This
would tie in wonderfully with the de la Pryme's translation
of the Domesday record for Stainforth, which describes
the hamlet as having "7 sokemen with 4 carucates
of land and a Wood which was Pannage for Hoggs".
The earliest local maps of the area do indeed show a large
wooded area called "The Haggs", which, when
compared to a modern map of Stainforth, covered a large
section of land from the back half of the greyhound stadium
to the sand quarry, several hundred yards away. This woodland
is still evident as late as the middle of the 19th century,
being clearly marked on the Ordinance Survey map of 1854.
There is another possible
explanation for how the area became named and that has
more to do with dialect. A "hag" is a northern
English and Scottish dialect word for a firm spot in a
bog. Prior to the draining of this area by Vermuyden in
the 1620s, large parts of the land between Doncaster and
Thorne consisted of bogs or fens. John Leland, who wrote
about Stainforth when he visited these parts sometime
around 1540 said "The ground al about Thurne is other
playn, more or fenne.", which could also refer to
the boggy state of the ground around the large lake which
once stood between Stainforth and Thorne.
Whilst researching
various aspects of Stainforth's history, I came across
this report concerning Haggs Wood which was written in
the 1930s:
"Among the many
excellent sites for industrial purposes The Haggs Estate
stand out prominently as being ideally situated for development.
Laying between the Thorne and Stainforth junctions of
the L.N.E. Railway, with which it runs parallel for nearly
half a mile, gives direct rail facilities to important
parts of Hull, Goole and Grimsby to the East, Doncaster,
Sheffield, Leeds and other important towns to the West
and North.
Sand and gravel for building and concrete work is available
on adjoining property, being worked by the Yorkshire Amalgamated
Products Co. Water has been proved by bore to yield 18,000
gallons per hour by ordinary suction pump. Coal may also
be obtained under special conditions from the large new
colliery less than one mile distant."
Of course, this vision
failed to materialise and the Haggs Wood of today is a
tightly covered conglomeration of vans and trailers.
In the 1960s, the
time at which I remember the area, there was a large swampy
piece of ground, stretching from behind the Democratic
Club to an extensive reed covered area behind the old
greyhound stadium. In recent years the swamp there has
been drained and, because the water table is quite shallow
in that vicinity, the water is now used for a large fishing
pond.
I have managed to
talk to a few people who remember the Haggs Wood estate
from both before and since World War 2, when life on the
narrow strip of land was harsh to say the least. The people
living there then had no running water, the only water
available was from a single pump, and waste water or sewage
disposal facilities were nonexistent.
Jeff
Sanderson lived on the Haggs Wood estate when he was
a child in the late 1940s
Haggs
Wood Shanty Town
Wallace Booker arrived in Stainforth
in 1939, where his father sought employment at the colliery
and the family lived in a makeshift collection of caravans
on Haggs Wood.
Here he recounts his memories of three years spent living
on Haggs Wood.
Stainforth Memories
Many thanks to Wallace and Sue Booker this item.
References:
Place Names of Yorkshire - A. H. Smith
OS 1854
Collins English Dictionary
The Itinery of John Leland
Kings, Canals and Coal - David Lunn
Stainforth - Our heritage - Norman Barrass
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