This is one of many films by a local amateur filmmaker, “Billy” Ibberson, made over a period of sixty years.  Born in 1902, William Ibberson was the son of a wealthy Sheffield steel maker, George Ibberson. The Ibbersons owned a company going back to the seventeenth century, and which became the first company to manufacture stainless steel cutlery: George Ibberson & Co., Violin Cutlery & Plate Works, 112-116 Rockingham Street.  This film was made a year after another Ibberson film...

This is one of many films by a local amateur filmmaker, “Billy” Ibberson, made over a period of sixty years.  Born in 1902, William Ibberson was the son of a wealthy Sheffield steel maker, George Ibberson. The Ibbersons owned a company going back to the seventeenth century, and which became the first company to manufacture stainless steel cutlery: George Ibberson & Co., Violin Cutlery & Plate Works, 112-116 Rockingham Street.  This film was made a year after another Ibberson film which is on YFA Online, Yorkshire Beaches (1945). This also shows the Ibberson family, on holiday in Filey and Bridlington. For more on George Ibberson see the Context for this film.

One obvious difference between this film - in the complete version - and the previous one is the arrival of Henry, the new-born and youngest of their four sons; here being shown off by Billy's wife, Lillian Ibberson (née Skinner). The other sons that can be seen in the film are Robert, the eldest, John, the middle child, and Charles. The family are seen walking in the Peak District – possibly along Froggatt Edge, Baslow Edge or Curbar Edge – something fairly common today for people living in Sheffield, but much rarer just after the Second World War. However, the Sheffield Ramblers – having walked via Kinder and Edale Cross – made up a sizeable number of the400 ramblers that gathered to trespass on Kinder Scout on Sunday 24 April 1934 to campaign for access to the countryside.


What is more surprising is seeing the last horse drawn bus being pulled as late as 1946. It may well be that this was only a ‘tourist’ operation, rather than a proper commercial service.   It isn’t easy to find out information on this – Sheffield Trams Remembered has lots of excellent photos and information on trams between 1935 and 1960, but unfortunately nothing on horse drawn trams.  One contributor to the Sheffield memories website states that he is filmed on the last horse drawn tram to run in Sheffield by his great uncle, Frederick Webster,on October 8th, 1960, which ran from Leopold Street to Beauchief in Sheffield in 1960 – this is in fact the date of the last electric tram to run in Sheffield (the contributor was only five at the time, so he may have misremembered). However, a contributor to the Sheffield Forum website states that: 'Taking advantage of the tracks still being down, a special single-deck horse drawn tram ran on the Moor for a short time in the run-up to Christmas 1961 and that was that'.  Also, a horse drawn carriage carrying a group of people, some in historic dress, is seen in a film in the YFA Collection by Brian Armstrong from 1975, called Transport.


Perhaps as surprising is that just two horses can pull such a large carriage filled with people. The term ‘horsepower’ was invented to compare the power of steam engines against that of horses. A calculation was worked out by James Watt using as the standard of turning a mill wheel, with a 12 feet in radius, 144 times in an hour (or 2.4 times a minute).   The figure arrived at was 33,000 ft·lbf/min, which is equivalent to 746 watts, or, ten times the amount that a healthy human can produce indefinitely (just over three times what a trained athlete can manage for a period of several hours). So, it would take 20 people to do the same amount of work as these two horses. One suspects that this must put an extreme strain on the horses, and the industrial revolution must be thanked for eradicating, eventually, the use of horses in this kind of work, at least in this country (even if this has meant greatly reduced numbers of these horses) – see also the Context for Arthington Show (1953).


Sheffield, like other large industrial cities in Yorkshire, were at the forefront of the introduction of public transport, and trams were the main form of this – see also Bradford Trolley Buses (1972). The first tramway line in Sheffield was in fact, as one might expect, horse-drawn, opening in 1873 between Lady's Bridge and Attercliffe, subsequently extended to Brightside and Tinsley, over to the industrialised east of the city. They were run as private operations as the legislation at the time preventing local authorities from running them. These were followed by the electric tram, introduced in 1899, running between Nether Edge and Tinsley.   According to the excellent Wikipedia entry on Sheffield trams, by 1902 all the routes were electrified, covering 39 miles by 1910 and 48 miles by 1951.


It was around this time, with increasing numbers of cars on the roads, and accidents, that Sheffield City Council made several films in the early 1950s, held with the YFA, dealing with the problems of traffic.  The first one, called Pedestrians and Traffic, dates from 1950, followed by Traffic Problems in 1951-52 and another just called Traffic from 1953. It was partly the concern to take traffic off the roads that led to an extension of bus services, resulting in Pond Street Bus Station, which was built just where this horse drawn tram starts out from in front of the Railway Station. This too was also filmed being opened by Sheffield City Council in 1956, Official Opening of Pond Street Bus Station.  


Sheffield built up a deservedly good reputation for its bus services, not only in the quality of the services, but also in keeping fares down: between 1974–1984 it received a subsidy of up to 85% of operating costs, leading to a growth of 7% from 1974–1984, compared with a 30% decline elsewhere in the UK.  Deregulation in 1986 put an end to this.  But Sheffield continued to show the way for the future of public transport in the UK when it started the supertram in 1994, which has helped to improve traffic congestion and the environment.


References


Graham Hague and Howard Turner, Sheffield Trams Remembered, Sheaf Publishing, Sheffield, 1987.

Sheffield Tramway Gallery

Wikipedia entry on Sheffield trams

Sheffield History - Trams

Sheffield Memories

Sheffield Forum website – trams thread