Sprotbrough stands on the limestone ridge above the valley of the river Don. Like a number of other places in the vicinity it was, for much of its history, an ‘estate’ village, in the ownership of the local gentry, the Copley family, who, from the sixteenth until the early twentieth century, lived in Sprotbrough Hall. As in other such villages, the hall and the parish church were closely-connected in more senses than one. It is, for
example, significant that there was no nonconformist church in the village until after the Sprotbrough estate was broken up.

The sale of the Sprotbrough estate in 1925 was typical of the social and economic changes of the period after the First World War. Several decades of declining incomes from agricultural rents had depressed the incomes of the landed gentry and high levels of wartime taxation made many estates and their large country houses uneconomic to maintain. An additional influence in the Doncaster area was the changes made to the environment by the increasing importance of coal-mining. The Childers had already sold Cantley Hall in 1901, and this was followed in the 1920s and 1930s by the sales of Sprotbrough, Wheatley Hall by the Cooke family. High Melton Hall by the Montagu family and Campsmount by the Cooke-Yarborough family. The estate was sold off at a series of auctions, raising over £90,000 (the library alone was sold for £10,000). Sprotbrough Hall was demolished and its site covered by a housing estate.

There is quite a large amount of heraldry in Sprotbrough church covering the Copley and Fitzwilliam families and a booklet has been produced by Pamela Lindley (john.lindley@ntlworld.com) and is available at the Doncaster archives and at the church archives.

Visit St Mary's church website

Doncaster and District Family History Society has published:

• Burial indexes for Sprotbrough
• Burial indexes for Sprotbrough 1559- 1910 available on CD
• Monumental Inscriptions available on CD
• 1851 Census
• 1871 Census available on CD

The following registers of Sprotbrough, St Mary the Virgin,are available at Doncaster Archives :

• Baptisms 1559-1961
• Marriages 1559-1992
• Burials 1559-1912
• Banns 1823-1997
• Index : Baptisms 1559-1879 Marriages 1559-1837 Burials 1559-1912
• Bishop’s transcripts 1600-1846