The name derives from Or-pits as, anciently, the main local industry was the mining of ore.[1] The village falls within the Burngreave ward of the City.

[2] In the late Middle Ages, the Duke of Norfolk was the lord of the manor and owned the large woods surrounding it, now almost all covered by housing.

Its outflow ran by the side of the lane as far as Burngreave Vestry Hall, where it was joined by a burn which rose in Old Park Wood.

[3] A few more survive in Crabtree, formerly a separate hamlet, lying immediately north west of Pitsmoor.

Pitsmoor was described as eminently respectable and a languorous and soothing suburb, in an article in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph in 1906.