Five Churches Walk

History

The Five Churches Walk is a 10-mile circular route through the villages of south Rotherham, starting at Todwick, that visits five churches: St Peter and St Paul at Todwick, St James at Anston, St Peter at Thorpe Salvin, All Hallows at Harthill and St John the Baptist at Wales. It is one of the heritage trails in a booklet from Heritage Inspired, South Yorkshire's faith tourism initiative, which the National Churches Trust now hosts. The booklet presents the walk as a way to see some of Rotherham's finest church architecture, says it can be walked in either direction and can be roughly halved by using the Chesterfield Canal path, and gives a short history of each church. It says Todwick's church was almost certainly built in Anglo-Saxon times, in the early 11th century, that there has been worship at Anston since at least 1171, that Thorpe Salvin's nave dates from about 1130, that Harthill's first church was built in 1085, and that Wales's original Norman church was built in the reign of Henry I.

Heritage Inspired grew out of a project of 1998 in which Richard Atkinson, then Vicar of Rotherham, worked with the borough council to secure funding to interpret Rotherham Minster and the Chapel on the Bridge for visitors; that became the Rotherham Churches Tourism Initiative. The Heritage Fund records a grant of £491,500 to Heritage Inspired, awarded on 13 September 2006.