The Bramall Family
The Bramall family were residents of Manor Oak Farmhouse, a building which has stood on the site since the park divided into house tenancies in the early 18th Century. Even in the 1930's the Manor Oaks area was open countryside, a glorious haven in comparison to the expanding industrialisation in the valleys below. To learn more about the Manor Oaks farm site, click here. The photos to the left and right show the unfortunate decline of the farmhouse's exterior: luckily work is currently underway to restore the building to resemble how Bramall's
living there nearly 100 years ago would remember it.
A chance meeting with the grandson of the last farmer to live here has provided us with a window into life on the Manor in the early 20th Century. Douglas Oscar Worrall Bramall's account of his father's years in the farmhouse between 1919 and 1938, as well as the photographs provided, illustrate the experiences of living in this transitionary period in the Manor area, halfway between pastoral traditions and increased urbanization.
Oscar Bramall: Manor Oaks family tree and account (pdf)
As Douglas envisages, Manor Oaks "must have been a wonderful place in its prime": the family in the 1920s had two maids, plentiful receiption rooms and an extensive garden. The photos we have in the Bramall archive account for this sense of rural prosperity. The picture to the left shows the Bramall family, with Oscar as patriach on the far left, Clara his wife in the patterned dress on the front row, and their numerous children and grandchildren, taken in the late 1930s.
The farm's horses, in particular provided Oscar Bramall with a critical source of livelihood during and after the First World War. These "Manor Oaks" breeds were used for ploughing and haulage, and also enjoyed great popularity at Country Shows.
In contrast (top right) by the 1920s there was another, more contemporary mode of getting around in the farmhouse front drive: the motor car!
Douglas, who recounted his father's time at Manor Oaks, is pictured in the farmhouse garden's in the image to the left: presumably not long before the family's economic prosperity 
took a downturn and were forced (as they did not own the farm outright) to sell off the estate to Sheffield City Council who had plans for council housing on the land. The Bramall family have also kindly provided us with a photograph of the late Oscar's gravestone, also detailing (amongst other family members) Douglas' death in 1991.
Back
