In the mid-1930s, Sheffield Council, and the neighbouring Wortley Rural District Council agreed to develop a large area of farmland for domestic habitation. The green belt was bordered to the south by Hillsborough and Wadsley Bridge and to the north by Grenoside and Ecclesfield. The Sheffield-West Riding demarcation line ran through the centre; consequently, there was a small but vociferous opposition from some members of the Wortley Rural District Council, who saw it as an inevitable “swallowing up” of their historical villages by an ever-expanding industrial city. For Sheffield, however, it was essential that they find room for some 30,000 new homes as they continued production of a large proportion of the world's stainless steel. A power sharing agreement ensured that one third of these new homes would be built here, Parson Cross. (One anomaly of this power sharing was that kids in the same class at school, who lived at different ends of the same street, could well be administered by differing education authorities.) According to a 1901 map, a circle based around Parson Cross Road and Parson Cross School, was then a small estate known as Parson Cross. The name originates from a large marker cross based at "The Grange" (now Wadsley Bridge WMC) which was visible from miles around, and signified the pathway to the Parsonage at Ecclesfield Church. The base to this cross was unearthed in circa 1908, on the site of The Grange's new vinery, and scattered into pieces. A second marker cross was situated at Creswick Greave. The only recognisable Parson Cross street in existence in 1901 was Doe Royd Lane.