Rooted

A butcher's son from Lincolnshire, born 1866, moved to West Yorkshire as a boy, was bright enough to attend Batley grammar school then, as a 14-year-old, moved to Sheffield as an apprentice watchmaker. He turned out to be an archetypal Victorian entrepreneur, founding one of the country's first mail-order businesses, that eventually employed over 3,000 people in the city

He must have become very rich, but my impression of John George Graves is that he did not succumb to the hubris and greed that overtakes many who consider themselves 'self-made'. Certainly, he gave back to the city that nurtured to him a lot of cultural and social assets. Many of these bear his name, but still I think he was not pursuing self-aggrandisement, but rather he saw it as a responsibility of those who succeeded to strengthen the society that enabled them. He had much in common with the Quaker entreprenneurs who were his contemporaries, but his own morality stemmend from his Methodist roots

His gifts to his city include libraries, the Graves art gallery, and many of its artworks, the Graves student union building in the university and many gifts of land - he was a great believer in the the benefits of green space are open-air recreation. Three separate land purchases from an estate whose records go back before Domesday book created what is now Graves Park - Sheffield's largest. This includes open grassland, sports fields, lakes, walkways, a historic rose-garden and a sweeping arc of mature, steep woodland. Some of the wood is identifiably 'ancient' and has evidence of a past life that includes charcoal burning, lead and iron smelting 

The park has an active group of 'Friends' - formed when there was a threat that the council might sell some of the land as 'surplus to requirements' - who are digging ever deeper into its history. It is a highpoint in the city - not just metaphorically, but physically - and today, just as storm 'Isha' was warming up, may not have been the most sensible day to walk in its woods, but we emerged unscathed, and convinced by Mr Graves legacy that there is such a thing as society