Course
Shire Brook rises as an underground spring at a height of 192 metres above sea level beneath the Red Lion public house in the Gleadless Townend residential area at 53°20′41″N 1°25′32″W / 53.3447°N 1.4256°W / 53.3447; -1.4256. The Brook runs in a culvert from beneath the public house before emerging into the open on land between Seagrave Crescent and Lister Crescent. It initially flows NE going beneath housing to emerge on the Jaunty Park recreation and sports grounds as an insignificant and rubbish strewn stream running at the rear of the Birley Vale Industrial Estate. It is then joined by an unnamed stream which rises from a spring further up the park. After 1.5 km it passes under the A6135 (Birley Moor Road) and swings easterly, disappearing underground, as it flows for almost a kilometre through a culvert beneath the former Normanton Spring landfill site which has now been landscaped and planted with trees. The brook emerges and continues its journey east going through Wickfield Heath and under the A57 road (Mosborough Parkway) before flowing through the Shire Brook Valley Local Nature Reserve on the northern side of the A57.
At this point the brook receives its only sizeable tributary, an unnamed stream which rises at Birley Spa at a height of 100 metres above sea level, flowing NE down a gorge for a kilometre to the Shire Brook valley. The Shire Brook then disappears underground again as it runs beneath the former Beighton Road landfill site just to the north of Beighton before entering an area of wetland rich in bird life known as Beighton Marsh. The final 200 metres of Shire Brook’s journey before it joins the Rother is again through an underground culvert beneath the site of the former Woodhouse Junction railway sidings which is now disused brownfield land which was being considered by Network Rail as a location for a new National Engineering Centre before plans were rejected in April 2008. Shire Brook enters the River Rother at a height of 37 metres above sea level at approximately 53°21′22″N 1°20′22″W / 53.3562°N 1.3394°W / 53.3562; -1.3394.
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