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Stocksbridge is a small town in the civil parish of Stocksbridge, in the City of Sheffield, in South Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it lies just to the east of the Peak District. The town is located in the steep-sided valley of the Little Don River, below the Underbank Reservoir. It blends in to the areas of Deepcar, Bolsterstone and the eastern end of Ewden valley around Ewden village, which are also within the civil parish. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 Census was 13,455.

Throughout the whole of recorded history, up until the early 18th century, what is now Stocksbridge was a deciduously wooded valley which ran from Deepcar at its southeastern end, to Midhopestones at its northwestern extremity. A river, originally called the Hunshelf Water but afterwards renamed the Little Don, ran through the valley. This river was also, unofficially, called the Porter, probably on account of its peaty colour. A dirt road, connecting Sheffield with Manchester ran through the woods adjacent to the river. There were a few stone houses in the valley and a sprinkling of farms on each hillside.

In 1716 John Stocks, a local farmer and landowner, occupied a Fulling Mill halfway along the valley where a flat, now dry flood-plain, created by the meltwater at the end of the last ice age, extended southwest from the river. At this place he reputedly built a footbridge over the river, perhaps so that his workforce could reach the mill from their homes on the north side. This originally wooden structure, Stocks' Bridge, gave the place its name, not only because it was about the only thing there apart from the mill itself, but also because as a crossing place it appeared under that name on Thomas Jeffrey's map of 1772, thereby effectively establishing itself as a place name. On various occasions this bridge was destroyed by flooding, and was eventually replaced by a stone structure in 1812.

In 1794 three businessmen, Jonathan Denton, Benjamin Grayson and Thomas Cannon, built a large cotton mill extremely close by, or possibly upon the site of the original mill.

The valley bottom today is almost entirely occupied by steel works. Steel manufacture in Stocksbridge had always been by melting iron and steel firstly in crucibles (from 1860), then Bessemer converters (from 1862) and Siemens Open Hearth Furnaces (from 1899 until 1968) and lastly Electric arc furnaces (from 1939 until 2005). Iron has never been produced from iron ore at Fox's, by any method.

In October 2006, Corus was taken over by the Indian company Tata. Corus Engineering Steels (Stocksbridge site) was renamed Tata Steels Speciality. During the 2008 recession Stocksbridge works reduced its workforce and output, focusing on producing lower quantities of high-value product for the aerospace and oil and gas markets. After the recession the company returned to profitability and began investing once again. In 2011 £6.5 million was invested in boosting the site's ability to produce aerospace steel, and further developments were planned for 2013.

However in December 2015 Tata came under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office in connection with the alleged falsification of certificates guaranteeing the quality of its speciality steels. This was then followed in early 2016 by an announcement from Tata that they would be selling their entire steelmaking interests in the UK, due, they said, to crippling electricity prices in the UK which are more than double the price in the European Union and in other competing countries, and to large volumes of cheap steel which are being exported to the west by China. If a buyer could not be found, then steelmaking in the Stocksbridge valley would finally end, after almost 160 years.

However on 9 February 2017 it was announced by Tata and by the Liberty House Group, that the latter had purchased Tata's entire UK steelmaking operation for GBP 100 million. This has secured the continuation of steelmaking in the Stocksbridge valley.