Port Mahon revisited

I believe that this is one of three famous sites of Napoleonic battles. All three had places named after them in Sheffield .Can any one help?

What do u want to know exactly?

I've visited Mahon in Spain. It always intrigued me how I saw "Port Mahon" on only one Sheffield map but no others, nor any reference to the area on road signs.

Trafalgar and Waterloo

I have been looking into Port Mahon in Sheffield for some time. Not a great deal of information. My Grandmother had a sweet shop on Netherfield Road. Just of the steep hill from the university to Hillsborough. Can't remember the name. Pulled down in the 70s I believe. I have post cards sent to my dad and uncles around 1912 - 1920 with Port Mahon as part of the address.

There is a picture of Port Mahon on picture Sheffield

I've visited Mahon in Spain. It always intrigued me how I saw "Port Mahon" on only one Sheffield map but no others, nor any reference to the area on road signs.

another mystry ... New York.. in Rotherham:help:

The fame of Port Mahon lies in the notorious defeat of the British garrison of Minorca by the French in 1756 which at the time was put down to the desertion of the British defenders by Admiral Byng and his fleet. Byng was subsequently court martialled for 'failing to do his utmost' to defend the garrison at Port Mahon, found guilty and shot. In 1763 at the end of the war Minorca was returned to the British but again succumbed to an invasion by the Spanish after a protracted seige of Port Mahon in 1782.

There seem no certainty which of these events gave rise to the Sheffield place-name although R.E Leader suggests it was the restoration in 1763.

The earliest map I have that shows Port Mahon is Fairbank's 1795 map of the Parish, but it is shown on several later maps, those of Leather and Tayler for example, as well as the first OS map of ~1855. The name appears as late as 1905 on the large scale OS map.

Here's how it appears on the 1795 map...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/Taidi/PortMahon.jpg

I have an old letter in my collection with a PORT MAHON postmark of 1856. Here's an edited version of an article I wrote for the Sheffield Philatelic Society:

The name Portmahon (also found as Port Mahon or Port-Mahon) does not appear on modern maps of Sheffield, and few people are familiar with it as a locality. The name applied to a small area in the Netherthorpe district, behind the old Royal Infirmary near St Philip’s Road, and it can be found on older Sheffield street maps. There was a Baptist chapel known as Portmahon Chapel, built in 1839, which stood near the present Medico-Legal Centre in Watery Street, and which was demolished in the 1960s. The name "Watery Street" refers to the stream (once spanned by the long-gone Portmahon Bridge) which came down the valley from Crookes, but which since the early 1800s has run through an underground culvert before emptying into the River Don.

Originally, Portmahon was the name of a short street which ran in a westward curve from the junction of St Philip's Road and Upperthorpe Road. According to the late S. Roy Davey in his book "Crossin' O'er", it evidently acquired its unusual name in the 18th century, when on two occasions the British fleet captured Mahón, the largest town on the island of Menorca. The street was evidently first laid out during a wave of patriotism that swept the country after one of these events. Portmahon was later extended south-westwards, but the extension had the name Watery Lane. This can be seen on an undated (probably early 1890s) "Kelly’s Directory Map of Sheffield" that I have. Some time in the 1890s the name Watery Lane began to apply to the whole street, and so the name Portmahon disappeared as a street name, but it was still used for the adjacent district. The whole area was redeveloped in the 1960s, when Watery Lane disappeared completely, its site now being part of a recreation ground. It is interesting to note what was told me by an old friend, whose grandmother lived in the Netherthorpe area. She always pronounced the place-name "PortmaHON", with the emphasis on the last syllable. This agrees with the Spanish pronunciation of "Mahón", unlike, for example, the Irish surname "MAHon". A post office was opened at Portmahon in 1852, but this closed some time between 1943 and 1946, and only Sheffield’s older inhabitants will remember the district being known as Portmahon. However, the name did survive until the late 1990s on a pillar box at the junction of St Philip's Road and Watery Street. In accordance with current Royal Mail practice, the name of the locality is no longer stated on the collection time plate on this box, though it may perhaps still be found in Post Office records.

I haven't been back recently to look at the pillar box - some boxes now show the locality again.

Thanks for those posts Greybeard and Hillsbro - I don't live too far away from there and was intrigued to see the name Port Mahon on a copy of an old OS map I've got. Always wondered how it got its name.