I suppose many cities, like Sheffield, have their own myths. Sheffield was built on seven hills (like Rome), it used to be the cleanest industrial city in Europe (no longer industrial and probably not as clean these days), and of course it is the country's biggest village.
If there is any truth in the last claim, it is in the sense that Sheffield is made up of many villages. It is a mosaic of small communities, sometimes one inside the other like Russian dolls. The boundaries are rarely clear; reference to a map doesn't really help, as the name is written in the general area and boundaries are rarely shown.
So, Burngreave is a ward and its boundaries can be found on maps. Pitsmoor is somewhere in Burngreave and there are some places in Burngreave that are definitely not in Pitsmoor, eg Fir Vale. There are other places such as Woodside and Pye Bank which despite their names seem to be part of Pitsmoor.
My diagram shows how Pitsmoor relates to local geography (click on it to see a larger version). The confluence of the the River Sheaf with the River Don is visible from the gents (see photo above) on Blonk Street. It is possible to see the confluence over the wall to the right (from where the other photo is taken) but I am told the best view was from inside the Gents. Sadly the Gents has been closed for many years. If the confluence were worth seeing, as you can see from the photo below, it is not, then there would be an argument for reopening the Gents as an observatory. Wicker crosses the Don close by the confluence and links the city centre to Pitsmoor.
The rivers tell the story of Sheffield in their geography. Remnants of the old grinders' wheels can be found along the tributaries and the earliest industrial development was along the Sheaf valley. The later developments along the Don Valley marked the time of the growth of Pitsmoor, which was until then a small village on the edge of Sheffield.
Most of the ward is on a hill, surrounded to west, south and east by the Don. The Sheffield floods in 2007, worked their way down the Don Valley. They started in the north east and rapidly propagated along Wicker and down the Lower Don Valley. This lasted a few hours. Floods further downstream in Rotherham and then Doncaster, persisted for longer. During the floods Pitsmoor was surrounded by a moat. Property was not affected but residents outside Pitsmoor had difficulty getting home.
If you would like a rough idea of what Pitsmoor looks like, there is an aerial photo. In my opinion, this photo does not show all of Pitsmoor and some of the distant areas are not a part of it.
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