The River Rother, a waterway in the northern England, gives its name to the town of Rotherham and to the Rother Valley parliamentary constituency. It rises in Pilsley in Derbyshire and flows in a generally northwards direction through the centre of Chesterfield, where it feeds the Chesterfield Canal, and on through the Rother Valley Country Park and several districts of Sheffield before joining the River Don at Rotherham in Yorkshire. Historically, it powered mills, mainly corn or flour mills, but most had ceased to operate by the early 20th century, and few of the mill buildings survive.
From the 1880s, the water quality deteriorated rapidly, as a result of coal mining and its associated communities. The river became unable to sustain life, and by 1974, was the most polluted of the rivers within the River Don catchment. The pollutants came from coking plants, from inefficient sewage treatment plants, and from the manufacture of chemicals. Major investment in upgrading the sewage treatment works took place, and in the treatment of industrial effluent before it was discharged to the river. The closure of the main coking plants has also aided the recovery of the river, and enabled restocking with fish to begin in 1994. By 1996, there was evidence for self-sustaining fish populations, and that the river could support organised angling.
A short section of the river in Chesterfield was once navigable, and may become so again as part of a development project, while there are plans to use the course from Rother Valley Country Park to Rotherham for the Rother Link, which would connect the Chesterfield Canal to the River Don Navigation. The lower river is managed because of flood risk: three regulators can restrict its flow. Their operation normally causes flooding of washlands, rather than of centres of population, which might otherwise be inundated.
Etymology
The second element of the name 'Rother' is the Common Brittonic -duβr, meaning 'water' (Welsh dwfr). The first element could be rö-, an intensive Brittonic prefix meaning 'great', or rūδ, 'red, reddish-brown'.
Course Source and upper stream The source of the river is at Pilsley near Clay Cross in Derbyshire, from where it flows to the west for a short distance, before turning to the north. The valley is shared with the Derby to Rotherham Railway, which makes the first two of a total of 20 crossings before the river reaches the eastern edges of Danesmoor. It is joined by another stream before passing to the west of North Wingfield, after which the Red Lead Mill Brook joins from the west. Before reaching Chesterfield, Birdholme Brook joins it from the west at Birdholme, Calow Brook joins from the east at Hady, and the River Hipper joins it on the southern edge of the town.
Within Chesterfield, the river was navigable, as the Chesterfield Canal joined the river and used it to access basins on the western bank. The first basin was connected to the river near Wharf Lane footbridge, but the coming of the railway severed the link, and a new basin was constructed to the north of the Brimington Road bridge in 1890. The canal company were not authorised by their Act of Parliament to use the river, but did so despite that. This stretch of the river forms part of a £300 million redevelopment project called Chesterfield Waterside, which will provide housing and amenities in an area which is currently derelict land. The project involves the creation of a short length of new canal to create an island in the centre of the site.Inland Waterways Association, Waterways, Summer 2010, Issue 228 A new basin has been constructed near the site of the 1890 basin, although it has not yet been connected to the river. Outline planning permission for the whole site was granted on 15 March 2010.
Below Chesterfield Between Chesterfield and Tapton, the river flows over a large weir while the canal is protected from flooding by a flood gate. The two waterways remain close as they flow northwards between New Whittington and Brimington, where the River Drone joins from the west. At Old Whittington both turn to the east, before turning north again at Staveley. Just before Renishaw, the river passes Slittingmill Farm, once the site of a slitting mill constructed by George Sitwell in the 1650s, used to split iron bars from his furnaces into thin strips for the production of nails, and the first to be constructed in the East Midlands. After the River Doe Lea joins the Rother from the east, the river is crossed by a grade II listed two-arched bridge built around 1840 by the North Midland Railway, which carries a minor road to the golf course.
It continues to the east of Eckington and the west of Killamarsh,Ordnance Survey, 1:25000 map, Sheet 278, to arrive at the Rother Valley Country Park, where the course is largely man-made, as the park is part of a flood-defence scheme. The river was diverted to run close to the railway to the west while 1.7 million tonnes of coal from the reserves under the park were removed by open cast mining between 1976 and 1981.Rotherham MBC, The Waleswood walk around Rother Valley, Doorstep Walk No 4 The channel was then rebuilt once mining had ceased and the pit had been filled in. The visitor centre uses a part of Bedgreave Mill, which was originally constructed around 1100, and is one of the first mills known to have been built on the River Don and its tributaries.
To the north of the site, the river powered Beighton Mill, which produced flour. The tail race, known as Beighton Mill Tail Goit, forms a separate channel to the east of the main channel for around .Ordnance Survey, 1:2500 map, 1892 Brookhouse Colliery, which was operational between 1929 and 1985, was located on the east bank of the tail goit, and the Pigeon Bridge Brook weaved its way through the site, passing under the railway tracks to join the tail goit. As the site developed, sections of it were culverted, and after the pit closed, the site became the Pit House West Opencast Site between 1989 and 1994. 300,000 tonnes of coal were obtained by reworking the spoil heaps from Brookhouse Colliery, and a further 1.2 million tonnes were obtained by opencast mining of the nine seams below the surface. Once extraction was completed, another year was spent landscaping the site. This included opening up the Pigeon Bridge Brook, constructing a series of ponds along its course to create a wetland habitat for wildlife, and re-routing the final section of the brook so that it joins the Rother further upstream, opposite the main lake of the Rother Valley Country Park. A significant proportion of the colliery site has been planted with trees, as part of the South Yorkshire Community Forest.
Beighton Mill Tail Goit is sufficiently large that it was designated as a main river by the Environment Agency. In 2015, they proposed that it should no longer be designated as such, although the main channel of the Rother would remain a main river. The move would transfer the responsibility for the tail goit from the Environment Agency to Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, who would then include it in their flood risk management plans. Continuing northwards, the river passes through the Sheffield districts of Beighton and Woodhouse, followed by the Rotherham districts of Catcliffe and Treeton, flowing on to its confluence with the River Don at Ickles, Rotherham.
Some sections of the river were highly polluted, so much so that when the Rother Valley Country Park was being created around the section north of Killamarsh and east of Beighton, cleaner water was brought in from The Moss to feed the park's lakes. The recent closures of industry and the work of the Environment Agency has improved the quality of the river Rother. The watercourse now holds a good head of coarse fish, and angling clubs are springing up along its length. Members of Ashfield Angling Club, which has fishing rights on the river near Orgreave, regularly catch chub, roach, barbel, and pike.
The planned Rother Link canal will use part of the river to connect the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation to the Chesterfield Canal.
Milling Historically, the river has been used to power a number of mills, although little remains at most of the sites. The furthest upstream was Whitebank Mill, to the south-west of Spital. It was a corn mill in 1881, but the site was marked as Whitebank Yard by 1898. Spital Mills was a little further north, below the confluence with the Spital Brook and above the River Hipper. In the late 19th century, it was a tobacco mill, and was later known as Mason's Cigarette Works, but by 1918 cabinets were being manufactured there. The three-storey mill building has survived, and is now used by Spital Tile Company. To the east of Chesterfield railway station, there were two weirs and a second channel with sluices at both ends, but no sign of a mill building by 1881. Wheeldon Mill was located to the east of Whittington Moor, and was a flour mill in 1885. However, by 1898, the Great Central Railway's Chesterfield Loop line to Chesterfield Central railway station had been built through the site, and the main channel of the river had been moved to the west of the railway, to save the need for two bridges. Its name is retained in Wheeldonmill Lock on the Chesterfield Canal.
To the west of Staveley was Staveley Mill. It was a flour mill in 1885 and a corn mill in 1898. It was still in use in 1919, but by 1938, the river had been diverted along the course of the mill leat, and the main channel closed, to accommodate the ever-increasing railway sidings associated with Staveley Works. George Sitwell's slitting mill was located on the road from Eckington to Staveley, and was operational from around the 1620s. A weir fed water into the goit, a long channel which ran to the west of the main river to power the mill, while the main channel eventually ran to the east of the Midland Railway's North Midland Branch. The tail race from the mill continued northwards to the west of the railway, passing under the railway tracks serving Renishaw Park Collieries, rejoining the main river after it crossed back under the railway. Much of the tail goit, downstream of Slittingmill Farm, still holds water. Renishaw Mill was a flour mill, situated between the former Eckington railway station and the junction of the Smithy Brook with the Rother. A mill was recorded here in 1650, when there were two grist mills under a single roof. The weir and the head race had been removed by 1898.