The Story of Sheffield E-Book

Tim Cooper

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 489

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Sheffield's story is one of fierce independence and a revolutionary spirit, its industrial origins having their roots in the same forests as the legends of Robin Hood. From Huntsman's crucible steel in the eighteenth century, to Brearley's stainless steel in the twentieth, Sheffield forged the very fabric of the modern world. As the industrial age drew to a close the city's reputation for rebelliousness spawned its popular reputation as capital of the 'People's Republic of South Yorkshire'. Yet in the wake of the Miners' Strike and the Hillsborough Disaster, the early twenty-first century has seen Sheffield retain its unique character while reinventing itself as a centre of education, creativity and innovation.

Leseprobe

For Joe and Ben,Sheffield born and bred.

Front cover: Jarvis Cocker mural by Bubba2000 at Kelham Island.

First published 2021

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Tim Cooper, 2021

The right of Tim Cooper to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9915 1

Typesetting and origination by Typo•glyphix, Burton-on-Trent, DE14 3HE

Printed by TJ Digital in the UK

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CONTENTS

Introduction and Acknowledgements

Chapter One   Crucible: 18,000BCE–1750CE

People on the Move

Discovering Metal

An Age of Iron

Becoming the English

Conquest and Lordship

The Making of a Metalworking Town

Governing Town and Trade

A Metal Revolution

Chapter Two   Forge: 1750–1860

Cutlery Capital of the World

A Town Transformed

A Community of Workers

‘A Damned Bad Place’

Reform or Revolution?

Sheffield Incorporated

Building a Civic Society

Dawn of the Heavy Industrial Age

Chapter Three   Furnace: 1860–1935

The End of ‘Old Sheffield’

Workers United

Towards a Better Way of Living

Big Steel

Metropolis

War and Big Business

Brave New World

Work and Play

Chapter Four   Phoenix: 1935–2020

Blitz

Reconstruction

City on the Move

Hitting the Wall

People’s Republic of South Yorkshire

Coming Up for Air

A Post-Industrial City

New Era?

Select Bibliography

INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The commission to write a history of Sheffield was a pleasant surprise, coming more than ten years since I had last worked in detail on the city’s past as historical consultant to the University’s commercial archaeological unit. For the first time, it gave me the opportunity to look at Sheffield’s story as a whole, not just as a collection of isolated sites and surveys. It also presented me with the occasion, as someone born and brought up in that other great metalworking city, Birmingham, to pay homage to a place I had first come to know in my early twenties and which has now been my home for more than half my life.

I say ‘homage’, because Sheffield for me was a love at first sight, and one that has grown over the years I have lived here. Yet at the same time, I like to think that writing the history of a place in which you do not have your roots allows some sense of detachment. From the start, I wanted to produce a narrative that sought out what was unique, or at least distinctive, in the story of Sheffield. All of us new to the city can remember our initial reactions to it. Mine included my first walk along Broad Lane from the University in search of the city centre. Looking around on Fargate, it took me a little while to realise that this was it! To someone brought up in a city like Birmingham, Sheffield seemed somehow lacking in buildings, with more of the look of a middle-sized provincial town than a great metropolis. One of the writers who recorded a similar reaction was George Orwell, who commented somewhat disparagingly that a town with a ‘population of half a million … contains fewer decent buildings than the average East Anglian village’.

My other early, and enduring, reaction to Sheffield was not to its urban centre but its relationship to the natural landscape. An industrial city in which an hour’s walk from its western suburbs would lead you through sublime scenery of woods and waterfalls and take you to the edge of the Peak District National Park. A city of hills, with none of the long, straight, suburban boulevards that characterise Birmingham or Manchester. The comment by the town’s celebrated local historian Joseph Hunter is almost as true of the 2020s as it was of the 1820s, when he wrote that ‘there is no street in Sheffield from which the country may not be seen’. A city made up of distinct communities separated by hills, each with its own spectacular views of the whole, or the rural uplands that surround it. A city of numerous rocky and wooded valleys with romantic names like Loxley and Rivelin.

As a Midlander, it seemed to me that Sheffield was where the south ended and the north began. As a historian, I knew that there was good reason to believe that populations that lived on boundaries between different jurisdictions – in Sheffield’s case it was one between kingdoms, provinces and counties – often developed an independence of outlook and even a rebelliousness of spirit. In addition to the fact that Sheffield had grown at some distance from major cross-country communication routes, was this, I wondered, why so much about the city seemed to be different? A city whose main public square was dedicated to peace but simultaneously celebrated a political radical accused of attempting to take over the town by force of arms. A city that contained only two statues of dignitaries (both monarchs, one of which was moved from the city centre to a suburban park) but numerous memorials to social reformers. A city that confounded the British establishment with its support for the French Revolution and, in the late twentieth century, still seemed to be at war with the government in Westminster. This was a common thread that I hoped to uncover in my story.

In writing this book, my greatest debt is to those who have written histories of Sheffield before me, no more so than to David Hey, whose numerous publications were a constant source of reference when I first worked on the city’s past myself. His death in February 2016, just as I was starting on my own history of Sheffield, was a great sadness and an immeasurable loss to the historical scholarship of Hallamshire. My debt to other historians of Sheffield will be apparent from a glance at the bibliography, and in a book that I wanted to keep free of footnotes, this is where I would point readers looking for the factual sources of my own narrative.

On a personal level, my greatest debt is to my wife, Pauline. Not only did she put up with me working on this book for more than five years, but her early suggestion that Sheffield’s predominant culture has its roots in its working-class communities set me on a fruitful train of thought as to how the city differed from the likes of Leeds and Bradford, let alone Birmingham and Manchester. A number of friends have similarly influenced my thoughts about Sheffield, in particular Simon Linskill with whom I shared a flask of tea before work on many occasions and discussed the roots of the independent streak of his fellow Sheffielders. I am grateful also to Jon Dewey, Matthew Hunt, Olivia Johnstone and Paul Newman, who read part or all of the book at a late stage and made very helpful comments. Since 2013 I have built up a big debt of gratitude to the numerous international students of the University of Sheffield who have accompanied me in all weathers on my Local History Walks around the city, and whose perceptive comments and thought-provoking questions have served as a constant reminder of what an amazing place Sheffield is.

Indeed, my two sons will have lost count of the number of times I told them how fortunate they are to have been born in Sheffield. I hope they believe it to be true; whether or not that is the case, this book is for them.

A Note About the Illustrations

My intention in taking the photographs for this book myself is to place the historical narrative within the context of a present time – which, for the record, was between the summer of 2020 and early spring 2021. As such, I hope to have provided something of a snapshot of Sheffield at a fixed point in its story.

Chapter One

CRUCIBLE: 18,000 BCE–1750 CE

People on the Move

The story of Sheffield begins on the boundary between highland and lowland Britain. During the course of its history this was to become a frontier between peoples, kingdoms, shires and even the provinces of a distant imperial power. Being on such a significant boundary was to shape much of what is distinctive about Sheffield’s story, from legends of dragons and outlaws to a fiercely proud political assertiveness and independent streak that persists even to this day.

The most prominent feature of this boundary was the River Don, its name (meaning ‘water’ or ‘river’) having origins in the distant Celtic past. Over time, settlement coalesced on a number of ridges that reached down from the uplands to the river valley below. The underlying geology meant that the numerous rivers and streams descending from the upland were fast moving and marked by many small waterfalls. The largest of the ridges, ending at the confluence of the rivers Sheaf and Don, formed the core of an ancient region of human habitation called Hallam, and it was at it was at the end of this ridge that the town of Sheffield was to evolve. But that is to get ahead of our story.

The confluence of the rivers Sheaf and Don; the land on the right was where the lords of Sheffield built the mighty castle around which the town coalesced.

A World of Ice and Stone

During the last Ice Age, between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, the region lay at the very edge of enormous glaciers that stretched south from the Arctic. This ice was several kilometres thick and covered much of the northern hemisphere. To the south of these great rivers of ice was a vast expanse of permanently frozen land, similar in character to the Siberian tundra of our times. At the height of the last Ice Age, some 18,000 years ago, small family groups of people travelled east–west across the tundra, making temporary shelter in caves and overhanging rocks along the way. As they hunted and foraged for their food, they shared the plains and rocky outcrops with animals such as woolly mammoth and rhinoceros, giant deer, bison, bears, lions and hyenas. In modern times, very occasionally, archaeologists have come across the discarded stone tools they used for cutting up the animals they killed and cooked using one of our species’ greatest technological accomplishments – the ability to start and control fire.

The First People

Just 22km south-east of modern Sheffield, some of the most spectacular remains of early human presence in northern Europe have been found. During the last Ice Age, Creswell Crags was one of the most northerly inhabited places on earth, providing people with shelter from the chilling winds in the form of a narrow gorge of limestone cliffs riddled with deep caves. Since the 1870s, antiquarians and archaeologists have found the stone implements and butchered animal bones that are all that remain of their desperate fight against the elements.

These finds include stone arrowheads and knives, the bones of woolly mammoth, rhinoceros and giant deer, and – most spectacularly – a bone decorated with a carving of a horse. In one of the caves, rock carvings and other forms of cave art have been discovered. These finds are unique in Britain and, together with the bone carving, represent the most northerly remains of early human creativity found anywhere in the world.

As the glaciers retreated in the face of global warming some 10,000 years ago, a greater expanse of Arctic-like tundra was laid bare. Over the course of a few hundred years, the ground thawed and dense forest and scrub slowly took over the land from the south. By this time, the mammoth and rhinoceros of the Ice Age had given way to aurochs (a large, extinct wild ox), wolves, bears, wild boar, red and roe deer, and smaller animals such as foxes, badgers, wildcats, otters and beavers.

During the Middle Stone Age (otherwise known as the Mesolithic era) from around 10,000 to 6,500 years ago, the population of Britain grew to a few thousand people. These people appear to have lived in small family groups but left little mark on the landscape. They were nomads who, between spring and autumn each year, moved across the land, much of it dense forest, gathering plants and hunting animals to eat. In winter they sheltered in caves. The distances covered by these first people were immense. Over the course of a season, the sparse archaeological remains of their encampments suggest that many of them travelled between the uplands to the west of Sheffield and the North Sea coast to the east. Over the generations, their journeys gradually became reduced, until they were effectively limited to annual movement between the hills and the valleys below. The greatest impact these first more settled communities had on the landscape was to start clearing the forests, which eventually gave rise to the expanses of elevated moorland that are familiar to us today.

Most of the movement of people was between winter shelters and summer camps, though occasionally more permanent resting places developed. Both types of settlement are evidenced by the remains of the inhabitants’ distinctive tools made from flakes of flint and chert (a kind of quartz) glued with birch pitch to wooden or bone shafts to make spears and arrows, or used on their own as knives and edge tools. Due to later intensive urban development, relatively few remains of these people have been found in the valleys. Up on the moors, occasional finds of their flint tools and weapons are the only traces left by our Mesolithic ancestors. Much of what they used would have been made of organic materials such as animal bone, skin and wood, and, along with the temporary structures of their settlements, have long since decayed.

Remains of a temporary habitation, carbon-dated to about 8,500 years ago, have been found on Broomhead Moor in what is now the parish of Bradfield. It takes the form of five deep holes in the ground that would have held the frame of a wooden structure built to withstand the west wind. Behind this ‘windbreak’, a paved area was discovered that incorporated stone hearths where the people tended fire for cooking food and providing warmth, along with a scatter of almost 2,000 pieces of worked stone.

Evidence of a similar settlement from this time, in the form of an oval arrangement of quartzite blocks and sandstone paving slabs, was discovered at Deepcar. This, again, probably formed the foundation of a ‘windbreak’ shelter some 4m by 3m, within which were three hearths. Scattered around the stone hearths were no fewer than 23,000 flint and chert tools of various shapes and sizes. It could perhaps be said that this was Sheffield’s first ever edge toolmaking site. This ancient ‘tool factory’ would probably only have been used during the summer months, but nearby the remains of a more permanent settlement have been found where a family could have lived over winter. Similar settlements have been discovered at sites across the Sheffield area, including Burbage Valley, Wyming Brook, Hackenthorpe, Wybourn, Birley Spa, Whirlow and Wincobank. The people of the region were starting to settle down.

The First Farmers

Settled farming reached Britain from the Middle East and continental Europe about 6,000 years ago during the period we call the New Stone Age, or Neolithic era. People still lived in fairly small groups with others to whom they were related. For some time, these extended family groups remained largely mobile, but instead of just following prey animals such as deer they were also moving domesticated animals between their winter shelters and summer pastures. They maintained the clearings in the woodland by periodic burning, and over time these hunting grounds were turned into areas of cultivation for crops. The period saw increasing forest clearance by people, and the first major monuments to be built in the landscape in the form of large mounds, or ‘barrows’. These were massive chambered burial mounds made of large stones and covered with earth. They were usually constructed on the highest points in the landscape and are often later recognised by the place-name element –low (from the Old English word for burial mound) in names such as Whirlow and Ringinglow.

The sites chosen for the barrows were likely to have been upland pastures to which families moved from wooded valleys during the course of the year. In these chambered mounds, family groups buried chosen representatives from among their dead, probably as a way of claiming rights and access to valuable land. The burials were often accompanied by objects such as flint axes and pottery vessels that seem to have been particularly valued, and group cohesion was likely to have been reinforced each time extended families moved back to the lands that had been claimed for their ancestors. The region between the Don Valley and the Peak District was extensively settled towards the end of the Neolithic period, leaving evidence such as groups of barrows on Broomhead Moor, Ewden, and other areas to the west of the region. In addition, stone tools from this period have been discovered at sites including Neepsend, Wybourn, Fulwood, Crookes, Whirlow, Walkley, Stocksbridge and Shirecliffe.

If the barrows provide evidence of family groups consolidating their seasonal relationship to the land, then the massive circular enclosures we call ‘henges’ are likely to have brought people together from further afield. The creation of these impressive structures would have required co-operation on a significant scale and they were probably used for large ceremonial gatherings of people from a wide area. Two surviving examples in the Peak District – Arbor Low and the Bull Ring – are both 30km west of Sheffield and probably served to bring people together from across the region, perhaps on an annual basis. Within these massive earth and stone structures we can imagine people feasting, exchanging livestock, polished stone axes and other valuable commodities. They may also have arranged ‘marriage’ partnerships and negotiated access to land for grazing and building camps. In general, the gatherings would have served to strengthen communal bonds among people who were still largely on the move. Undoubtedly, these impressive ceremonial gathering places were an important step on the journey from a nomadic to a more settled way of life in the region.

Discovering Metal

The end of the Neolithic period witnessed a huge growth in the construction of monuments, mainly in the form of burial mounds. This was an increase in activity that took place around the same time that metalworking was introduced to the British Isles. The first evidence of this are the gold and copper artefacts that are found in the archaeological record from about 4,700 years ago. Around 4,000 years ago people started to mix tin with copper to make the more durable material we call bronze, and with this discovery a revolution in living was under way.

A Settled Population

Alongside bronze-working, a new style of pottery appeared at this time, known as ‘beaker ware’, which is found among the grave goods in burial mounds across the whole of Europe. This used to be interpreted as evidence of a distinct ethnic population of colonisers but it is now considered more likely that it represents a technological leap in both metalworking and ceramics associated with increasing population, itself largely the result of more favourable climatic conditions.

Within a few hundred years of the appearance of beaker ware we also find another type of food vessel known as ‘collared urns’. It is notable that from burial deposits we can see that different groups of people seemed to prefer the different types of pottery, something that is probably best explained by the emergence of tribal groupings among the wider population. So, for example, while beakers are more commonly found in graves in the limestone areas of the Peak District, it was collared urns that were particularly favoured by settlers on the gritstone areas closer to what was to become Sheffield.

An important distinction between both groups and their predecessors who had built their burial mounds in prominent places across the landscape was their preference for cremation over inhumation as a means of disposing of their dead. However, there is little evidence that the emerging tribal organisation of the Sheffield region was dominated by the type of powerful chieftains who were buried with numerous gold grave goods in areas like the south-west of England. The evidence from the barrows in the Sheffield area, such as those at Grimesthorpe, is that they were constructed by ordinary farming families.

Technological advances and the probable emergence of tribal organisation went hand in hand with the development of more permanent settlements of circular huts with stone foundations, often associated with monuments in the form of round barrows and massive piles of stones known as ‘cairns’. On top of the stone foundations the houses were timber-framed. Perhaps most dramatically, in the low irregular field walls of earth and stone, we see the first indication of the parcelling of land for individual family units.

Before peat completely took over the uplands, the soil was sufficiently fertile for growing cereals as well as for grazing livestock, possibly using a rotation system. Pollen preserved in peat bogs shows that woodland was gradually cleared over the course of a 2,000-year period from the early Bronze Age. Stones were cleared from the cultivable lands and piled up to form cairns on the marginal areas. Pollen analysis from the upland moors in the vicinity of Sheffield suggests that this move towards more permanent settlement began about 3,700 years ago and reached its greatest extent some 200 years later. In the Sheffield region, significant settlement remains from this period have been identified at sites including Hall Wood in Ecclesfield, Chapeltown, Ecclesall Woods, Rivelin and – most extensively – at Winyard’s Nick on the south-western boundary near Hathersage.

When Did the Uplands Become Moorland?

Pollen analysis, combined with carbon dating, reveals that at the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago, the uplands on the edge of Sheffield looked very different from today. As the great rivers of ice retreated, the climate quickly turned warmer. Scrub vegetation started to colonise the land, followed over the next 2,000 years by the development of woods and forests. Both forest and scrub began to decline from about 7,500 to 7,000 years ago and peat began to take over the higher ground.

Big Moor on the south-western outskirts of Sheffield, once the grassy pastures of early settlers.

The reason for this dramatic change in the landscape is uncertain. Some archaeologists think it was the result of climate change, with wetter and colder conditions being the main cause. Others stress people themselves as the main agents in this dramatic transformation. This latter theory gains support from finds of charcoal in peat deposits that may be the remains of fires deliberately set to create woodland clearings. It is suggested that these grassy clearings would attract grazing animals such as deer, and being able to predict the whereabouts of your prey made it much easier to hunt.

In the long term, however, whatever the main cause of the deforestation, the loss of habitats eventually reduced the store of food available on the uplands, and from this time onwards settlement became increasingly concentrated in the valleys below.

Earth and Sky

In contrast to the first settlers who built large burial mounds to establish their relationship to the land, as the population increased, and communities became more permanent, people started to construct monuments that seem to have been an expression of their relationship to the stars and sky. These stone circles were considerably smaller than the massive henges built by their ancestors and appear to have been associated with rituals performed by smaller family units rather than the larger-scale gatherings at sites such as Arbor Low.

Just under thirty of these smaller monuments still survive on the higher ground of the Sheffield region, either in the form of small circles of standing stones set in a low earthen bank, or continuous banks of earth or stone known as ‘ring cairns’. They typically have one or two entrances and sometimes a single upright stone outside the main enclosure. In the immediate vicinity of Sheffield there is a surviving example at Ash Cabin Flat on the moors above Wyming Brook. The circles were aligned to the setting or rising sun at the summer and winter solstices and are therefore likely to have been associated either with astronomical observations (perhaps with a mystical element) or rituals commemorating important stages in the agricultural year – or both. Like the earlier burial mounds, they would also have been a way of cementing social and familial bonds and, indeed, some circles combined these functions by incorporating cremations, sometimes in collared urns.

More usually, at the time that the stone circles were being built, people started to bury their dead under round mounds of earth that were considerably smaller, and in less prominent locations, than the earlier long barrows and chambered tombs. Dozens of examples of these mounds, and of the stone cairns, are to be found on the Hallam Moors above Sheffield, especially following the burning back of heather. Like the stone circles, these smaller round barrows appear to have been associated with more concentrated groups of people, probably based on family units. Again, this seems to be evidence that since the time of the first farmers, people were increasingly settling down.

Stone circle on Froggatt Edge near Sheffield: local families are likely to have come here to celebrate the passing seasons.

Bronze Age Settlement Case Study – Swine Sty

Situated some 14km south-west of Sheffield on Big Moor, archaeological surveys have revealed a small group of roundhouses with paved floors that can be dated from pottery remains to a period between 4,000 and 3,000 years ago. Excavation of one of the hut circles revealed its stone foundations and the probability that the main structure would have been built of timber and roofed with thatch or turf. The houses were about 7m in diameter.

Surrounding the houses were small plots of land enclosed by stone walls that have been interpreted as gardens or yards. Close by was a large scatter of worked shale that was discarded during the craft production of ornamental jewellery, mainly in the form of polished rings and bracelets. It is likely that these would have been used to trade for other commodities to supplement the families’ subsistence from their crops and livestock.

Pollen analysis of this and nearby sites has revealed a considerable increase in the amount of grassland during the Bronze Age, so it is probable that the farming in this area was mainly pastoral, with flocks of sheep and goats and herds of cattle being grazed on upland pasture in the summer months. Over the years, stones that had been gathered from woodland clearings to create the small irregular fields were heaped on the edge of the settlement to form a large cairn, which in turn might have served as an identifier of land ownership. Some of the fields may have produced cereals after the land had been tilled with a simple ‘ard’ or scratch-plough.

It is possible that the occupants of these houses only lived there during the grazing periods and for the rest of the year dwelt in the valleys below. Unfortunately, the intensive development of lowland sites in the modern period has meant there is very little evidence from which we can draw firm conclusions. Each extended family or kin group probably had use of a particular group of barrows and one of the small stone circles that have been identified in the area. The barrows usually contain multiple burials of people with quite simple grave goods. These were the ordinary farming families who were among the first to lay down roots in the Sheffield area.

At around the same time that people began building settlements of round houses among fields they were also constructing impressive enclosures on prominent hilltops, often surrounded by stone walls and wooden palisades. At first sight these have the appearance of fortifications, and so the common term that has been used for them is ‘hill forts’. There were at least seventeen of them constructed in the immediate vicinity of Sheffield. Traditionally, these hilltop enclosures were seen as evidence of a violent late Bronze Age society of warrior chieftains in which people had to seek refuge in high places behind strong walls. However, at the same time that the ‘hill forts’ were being constructed, the round houses that were being built among fields give the impression of a more peaceful society. Were the ‘forts’ there for the people of the fields to take refuge in times of danger? In most of the enclosures a water supply is lacking, so the sites would have been hard to defend for any length of time. And at only a minority of the sites, such as at Mam Tor, some 20km west of Sheffield, is there evidence of large-scale construction of dwellings within the enclosure.

More recent archaeological opinion has questioned the idea of a primary defensive purpose for these enclosures. In this view, sites such as Carl Wark (see below) were more likely to have been either ceremonial gathering places for people in the area similar to the earlier henges, or places where long-distance cattle-herders could congregate and make exchanges. At the same time, they might have had a ‘political’ function as a place where communities and their representatives came together to make important decisions. In practice, just as with the stone circles, they are likely to have fulfilled a combination of these functions, including a defensive one.

Carl Wark: A Bronze Age ‘Hill Fort’ in Sheffield

This rocky outcrop in the Burbage Valley (which itself means ‘stream by the fortified place’ in Old English) is about 230m long and 60m wide, and was enclosed around 3,000 years ago. On its northern flank the site makes use of the natural cliffs, while on the southern side a 3m-high embankment was constructed. Most impressively, on the narrow east side the people who made use of the site defended it with a substantial wall of massive stone blocks.

The interior of the enclosure is strewn with boulders, which means it could not have been used as a continuous settlement like the site on top of Mam Tor, some 12km to the west. Similarly, the lack of running water within the enclosed area itself would seem to make it unsuitable as a long-term defensive refuge. However, on the sandy soils to the south-west of the outcrop there is evidence of field boundaries dating from a similar period to the ‘hill fort’, together with more than seventy stone cairns, burial barrows and a ceremonial enclosure known as a ‘ring cairn’. Taken together, these suggest a significant Bronze Age settlement of which Carl Wark was a prominent feature.

Carl Wark.

An Age of Iron

The forging of iron, which was to play such an important part in the story of Sheffield, became widespread in the British Isles around 2,700 years ago. This period, which includes the Roman occupation of Britain from 2,000 years ago, was a time of dramatic social and economic change that saw the end of Bronze Age patterns of subsistence farming in favour of more settled systems of agriculture and life in general. It was also a period of significant climate change and soil depletion, which in the Sheffield region was characterised by the unstoppable advance of peat in the upland areas and the creation of the desolate moorland that we know today.

Gradually, the upland fields became agriculturally unsustainable and settlement was increasingly concentrated in the valleys below. For this reason, we know less about the Iron Age inhabitants of the region than we do of their ancestors, as the remains of both their lowland fields and settlements have been largely obliterated by subsequent development. However, there is enough evidence to suggest that the population increased, and while the uplands were now used exclusively for summer grazing, the south-facing slopes and valley sides were the site of increasingly sophisticated farming settlements.

Celts and Romans

Equally sophisticated were the social and political arrangements of Iron Age Britain, which included a long period of colonisation by the Romans who came to dominate much of Europe in this period. By the time of the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 CE, the northern part of the region that was to become Sheffield was under the control of the Celtic people known as the Brigantes, whose centre of influence was at Aldborough in North Yorkshire. To the south-east, and separated by the River Don and its tributaries, were the tribal groupings of the Corieltauvi, and right up to modern times Sheffield lay on one of the most significant boundaries in Britain, a fact that was to have an important influence on its history and development and, arguably, even the character of its people.

By the late Iron Age, the region was quite extensively settled and cultivated, as can be seen in the complex field systems in Ecclesall Woods, at Ecclesfield, and an important site at Whirlow (see below). At the same time, we can see the development of the first ‘industry’ in the production of beehive-shaped, hand-operated millstones or ‘querns’ for grinding corn, at the nationally important site at Wharncliffe (meaning ‘quern cliff’). Also from this period comes the first evidence of the metalworking for which the area was to become famous, with sites of early forges being known from a broad area from Barnsley and Doncaster in the east to Penistone and Sheffield itself in the west.

A major monument from this period is the massive ‘hill fort’ at Wincobank, which, when built around 2,500 years ago, would have dominated the Lower Don Valley and approaches to the uplands to the west. As with the similar enclosures from the Bronze Age, there is no direct evidence as to whether this structure was used militarily or as a place of ceremonial gatherings. However, there are signs that part of the earthwork was once subjected to intense heat, which might point to it having come under attack at some time in the past.

Wincobank hill fort was probably built by the Brigantes along the border with the neighbouring Corieltauvi to the south-east, as part of a defensive system that also included the so-called ‘Roman Rig’, a series of earthworks that extended north-eastwards towards Mexborough. Whatever its exact use, the site at Wincobank has the distinction of being the only Iron Age hill fort to survive within the boundaries of a major European city.

Eastern ring ditch of Wincobank Hillfort with its commanding views over the Lower Don Valley.

The Dragon of Wantley – Folk Memory of an Iron Age Foundation Myth?

There is some evidence from place-names and local folk tradition that the tale of The Dragon of Wantley, popularised from the sixteenth century, was based on medieval and earlier legends of a beast dwelling in the high crags at Wharncliffe to the north of Sheffield. According to legend, at the time of the annual festival of Samhain (or Celtic New Year, 31 October to 1 November) the dragon would do battle with a water monster emerging from pools in the Don Valley below. The festival itself was associated with the spirits that dwelt on the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead. By the sixteenth century the legend had become more standardised, with myths quite common in Europe of a dragon that had to be slain before a town could be founded, or a similar undertaking begun. It is in this context that Sheffield Town Hall has a decorative stone frieze of a knight killing a dragon on the main stairway and a rather cute representation of the same beast above the main entrance.

The Dragon of Wantley, as depicted on the Town Hall main entrance.

Like the later Robin Hood legends (see below), the marginal lands on an important political boundary (here between the Celtic tribes of the Brigantes and the Corieltauvi) are just the kind of place we would expect the survival of stories associated with primal battles between elemental forces. Away from the realm of myth, we also know that Wharncliffe, Stocksbridge and Deepcar have some of the most important early remains of human settlement in the whole of the Sheffield region. It is perhaps equally significant that folk traditions associated with Halloween (itself based on the earlier Celtic festival of Samhain), such as ‘soul-caking’, persisted in Stocksbridge and Deepcar, in the shadow of Wharncliffe Craggs, right into the twentieth century.

Within little more than ten years following their invasion of Britain, the Romans had established roads and military installations in the Sheffield region. To the new arrivals, the lead mines of the Peak District were one of the main prizes of their conquered territory. At the same time, they took the opportunity of announcing their arrival to the British tribes in the area by building one of their arterial roads right through the sacred landscape centred on the stone circle at Arbor Low. The importance of establishing a military presence in the area was also due to the fact that the region formed the southern border of the powerful tribal confederation of the Brigantes. Later, this same border was probably used as the division between the two Roman provinces of Maxima and Flavia Caesariensis that were created by the Emperor Diocletian in the late third century CE.

Soon after establishing their foothold in Britain, the Romans had moved to subdue the powerful Deceangli tribes of North Wales. However, this campaign was abandoned in 47 CE due to the uprising of a number of the tribes of southern and midland Britain. Among these were the Catuvellauni, whose king, Caratacus, led a major rebellion against the invaders. Following his eventual defeat in 51 CE, Caratacus fled north to the capital of the Brigantes at Aldborough (North Yorkshire), but their queen, Cartimandua, had made a treaty with the Romans and duly handed him over as a captive. Over the next few years the Romans were engaged in suppressing uprisings among factions of the Brigantes opposed to Cartimandua, and it was probably at this time that forts were built on the River Don at Templeborough and in the Hope Valley at Brough (known by the Romans as Navio), with a network of military roads in between. In 2016, excavations at Whirlow Hall Farm uncovered the foundations of a Roman observation and signal tower that is likely to have been one of a series along the southern border of the Brigantes. Located at a high point on the edge of what is now Sheffield, this would have been in direct line of sight with the fort at Templeborough near Rotherham.

Archaeologists refer to the inhabitants of lowland Britain at this time as the Romano-British. In most cases they would have been indigenous people living under Roman rule. However, in one instance we know that a settler in the area had been part of the invading army. A thin bronze plate found in a field in Stannington in 1761, itself dating to 124 CE, records the grant of citizenship to a former infantry soldier following twenty-five years’ service in the military units of the Emperor Hadrian. It was probably lost on the farm that had been given to him in reward for his service and therefore, remarkably, records the career of a man who was recruited to the imperial army in central Europe in the vicinity of the River Rhine, saw service at the military base at Caernarfon in North Wales, and retired in the Sheffield area. It is possible he was one of a group of legionaries who were given parcels of land in the locality at that time.

Remains that have been discovered close to North Lees Hall, near Hathersage, 14km south-west of Sheffield, give us an impression of what a Romano-British settlement would have looked like. The village was laid out on a series of terraces on a south-facing slope. Each terrace was about 20m long and 5m wide and was edged with low stone walls. On each terrace were one or two buildings constructed on square stone platforms, probably representing the house and associated outbuildings of a single family.

Nearer to Sheffield, excavations and landscape surveys that commenced in 2011 at Whirlow Hall Farm have revealed a substantial settlement that first developed during the late Iron Age and which continued in use through the Romano-British era. It was a large settlement of its type, with an enclosed area of over 70 sq m approached by an entrance causeway with evidence of a wooden gateway. Radiocarbon dating of organic remains suggests that the enclosure was built and first inhabited between 350 and 120 BCE.

Among the stone foundations, evidence of Roman occupation included pottery, iron nails and a fragment of blown glass. In all, more than seven distinct styles of Roman pottery were found, manufactured both locally and in various places on the Continent. The latest pottery evidence found on the site suggests that the houses were finally abandoned in the early fourth century CE. Evidence in the immediate vicinity of iron forging and the manufacture of objects made of pewter (an alloy of tin and lead) have been carbon-dated to the Roman period. As such, they represent some of the earliest evidence of metalworking in the immediate area of Sheffield.

Whirlow Hall Farm, a site that has been occupied since the Romano-British period.

Becoming the English

By the end of the fourth century CE, uprisings throughout their continental Empire prompted the Romans to withdraw from Britain. The archaeological record for the next three or four centuries in the Sheffield region, as elsewhere, is sparse and difficult to interpret. Following the Roman withdrawal, many units of local production, such as pottery kilns, went out of use, making habitation sites more difficult to date accurately. More generally, as the sophisticated monetary economy introduced by the Romans collapsed, people in the region who had grown used to storing surplus food in pottery vessels gradually went back to producing just enough for their families’ immediate needs.

Despite the ambiguous archaeological evidence, it is clear that by the beginning of the first millennium CE, much of the layout of the settled landscape, in terms of networks of farms, villages and towns, had taken shape. This landscape was inhabited by a mixture of people, some of whose ancestors had been in the area for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and some who had come to the region from parts of north-western Europe in an attempt to make a better living for themselves. Over the next few centuries, under increasingly centralised political control, these people were to become ‘the English’.

The Angles

In terms of political organisation, the area found itself once again on a border, this time the southern boundary of the Celtic kingdom of Elmet, which arose during the late-Roman period from within the southern Brigantes and which exercised influence between the mid-fifth and early seventh centuries. Elmet may have existed as a significant tribal entity before the Brigantes made their peace with the Romans and then re-emerged following the end of the occupation.

The few surviving written records of the period do not make it possible to delineate the southern border of Elmet with any certainty. However, some historians have argued that it was marked by the River Sheaf (whose name derives from an Old English word for ‘boundary’), a tributary of the Don that was in time to give its name to the settlement at Sheffield. It may also have incorporated the earthworks known as the ‘Roman Rig’ discussed earlier, and a structure thought to be of similar antiquity on Broomhead Moor to the north-west of Sheffield known as ‘the Bar Dyke’.

The people who were to give their name to the country we know as England were a group of Germanic peoples who migrated from north-west Europe in the period immediately following the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the early fifth century. Over the next 200 years, Angles and Saxons settled throughout midland and northern England and formed independent kingdoms that included Deira to the north and Mercia to the south of the Sheffield region.

The Bar Dyke, probably once part of the southern border of the kingdom of Elmet.

Like their predecessors, the first wave of Anglian settlers were buried in mounds, accompanied by choice items from their possessions, and in some cases reusing monuments that had first been constructed in the prehistoric past. One of the most spectacular discoveries of such a grave was at Benty Grange, 28km to the south-west of Sheffield, in which an apparently prominent individual was buried with equipment including a fine helmet incorporating both pagan and Christian symbols. A little to the south, at Wigber Low in the parish of Bradbourne, five Anglian burials were discovered within an earlier Bronze Age cairn. Nearer to Sheffield, there is place-name evidence suggesting the presence of large burial mounds, subsequently destroyed, in the vicinity of what is now Tinsley, where they must have been prominent features in the Lower Don Valley.

Towards the end of the sixth century, the Celtic British kingdom of Elmet came under increasing pressure from the expanding Anglo-Saxon tribes. Following the unification of the northern Angles into a greater Kingdom of Northumbria in the early seventh century, Elmet was invaded and overrun, by which time Anglian domination of the area in the form of the rival kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia was complete. Once again, the people of the Sheffield region found themselves on a major border between competing political groups. The border itself was marked by the River Sheaf, Meers Brook and Limb Brook, all names with Old English meanings associated with ‘boundary’ and ‘division’. From the Limb Brook the frontier proceeded towards Whirlow, the name of which means ‘mound on the boundary’. Perhaps the most dramatic stretch of the border is where it follows the line of Stanage Edge, which still forms the western boundary of Sheffield and from the craggy heights of which we can still imagine ourselves on the frontier between mighty kingdoms.

Stanage Edge, imposing frontier between the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria and subsequently forming part of the western boundary of Sheffield.

This borderland was subject to dispute for much of the Anglo-Saxon period until, in the year 828, King Ecgbert of Wessex, to whom Mercia then owed allegiance, led his army to the village of Dore (whose name had the meaning of ‘gateway’ or narrow pass between the two kingdoms) to receive the submission of King Eanred of Northumbria. By this action he established his sole power over the whole of England. The historical significance of what is now a commuter suburb of Sheffield is further highlighted by an entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 942 when Edmund, son of Edward the Elder, King of England, was said to have conquered the Danes of Mercia ‘as far as Dore divides’.

Linguistically, the Angles’ influence on the landscape is evident from a number of place-names ending in -field, such as Bradfield, Dronfield, Ecclesfield and, of course, Sheffield itself, derived from the Old English ‘feld’ denoting ‘open country cleared from woodland’. In this, they were continuing a process that had commenced some thousands of years before their arrival. In general, their success in colonising the area is evidenced by the fact that the majority of place-names in the Sheffield region are of Anglian origin.

A significant transformation in Anglo-Saxon culture took place with their conversion to Christianity from the late sixth century. The existence of a church at Sheffield by at least the late ninth century is suggested by a carved stone cross of that date found in Sheffield Park 1,000 years later. This would almost certainly have originally stood in the near vicinity of Sheffield parish church (later the Anglican cathedral). In terms of political organisation, the Anglian period perhaps left its most lasting legacy through the division of the Northumbrian kingdom into a number of administrative territories or ‘shires’. The most southerly of these was ‘Hallamshire’, which included a large area consisting of the ecclesiastical parish of Ecclesfield and its dependent chapelries of Bradfield and Sheffield. The origins of the name ‘Hallamshire’ are obscure. Alternative interpretations derived from the Celtic, Old English and Old Norse languages suggest meanings as varied as ‘rocky place’, ‘hilly place’, ‘beautiful place’ and ‘land on the border’, with the latter perhaps being the most likely given what we know of the strategic location of the region. Whatever the precise origin of its name, the existence of this ancient territory was to live on in the memory of the people of Sheffield, and in its institutions, to the present day.

Northmen

Raids on the coastline of the British Isles by warrior people from the near Continent, known as Danes or Vikings, had begun in about 800 CE. These early raiders are unlikely to have made much impression on the Sheffield region due to its distance from the coast and comparative isolation from a fully navigable river. However, in 865 the Vikings changed tactic and landed a large army in East Anglia with the intention of conquering all of Anglo-Saxon England, which at that time was divided into four kingdoms. After securing a base at Thetford in Norfolk, the ‘Great Heathen Army’ moved north and in 867 captured the Northumbrian capital at York. Within ten years the Danes had gained control over the kingdoms of East Anglia, Northumbria and Mercia, leaving only Wessex to be conquered.

There followed two years of intermittent war with Wessex, whose king, Alfred, managed in 878 to enforce peace in return for granting the Danes jurisdiction over most of the northern and eastern half of the country, divided along a border running roughly from the Mersey estuary in the north to that of the Thames in the south and marked by the course of the Roman road known in modern times as Watling Street. This huge area, which included all of Yorkshire and Derbyshire, in addition to thirteen other counties, became known as ‘The Danelaw’. Over the next forty years the kings of Wessex gradually won back the territory to create a united English kingdom.

Due to the short-lived nature of the Danelaw, any lasting influence of the Vikings in the area was relatively limited but not without significance. It includes some place-name elements such as the ending -thorpe, meaning an outlying settlement, as in Grimesthorpe, Upperthorpe and Netherthorpe; isolated names such as Crookes from an Old Norse word for ‘a corner of land’; and local topographical names such as Fargate, one of the main thoroughfares in the city centre, from the Old Norse word ‘gata’ meaning a street. However, one the most significant legacies of the Viking occupation is that at the time of the compilation of Domesday Book in 1086 by the Normans (or Norsemen, themselves of Viking origin) one of the major landholders of Sheffield was a Scandinavian earl by the name of Sven.

On the eve of the Norman Conquest and at the beginning of the period we call the Middle Ages, the population of the Sheffield region was therefore one of mixed origins. In one or two areas the earlier Celtic British people are likely to have kept themselves apart. In some cases, these communities have been commemorated by place-names such as Wales, from the Old English word for ‘Britons’. In general, however, the broad scatter of place-names of British, Anglian and Scandinavian origin suggests a multi-ethnic population that was able to live together in conditions of relative peace and stability.

Conquest and Lordship

In 1086, twenty years after the Norman leader William the Conqueror won the Kingdom of England at the Battle of Hastings, comes the first historical record of the name ‘Sheffield’ (Escafeld in Old English) in the pages of his great tax survey known as Domesday Book. Meaning ‘open country by the River Sheaf’ (itself with a meaning of ‘boundary’), the settlement had started to develop at the lower end of a spur of land descending from the upland moors known as Hallam Ridge, and was one of a number of villages within the historic administrative region of Hallamshire. It was most likely here that Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland and last of the Anglo-Saxon lords of Hallamshire, had his manorial base, or ‘hall’. However, with substantial landholdings spread across the length and breadth of England, it is doubtful that he would have spent much time there.

At the time of the Conquest, Waltheof was one of three landholders with possessions in Sheffield, the others being Ulfac, Lord of Grimesthorpe, and the Viking descendant, Sven. Originally, Waltheof was such a close ally of the Norman leader that he had been permitted to marry William’s niece, Judith. However, when rebellions broke out against the invaders, the earl found himself caught up in the intrigues and was executed for treason in 1076. To Victorian scholars, searching for the roots of English ‘freedom’, Waltheof became a hero in the struggle against Norman tyranny and is commemorated as such by a stained-glass window in Sheffield Cathedral.

Ulfac also disappears from the historical record at around this time, meaning that he probably fell out of favour with the new regime and was stripped of his possessions. As for Sven, though he was able to keep hold of a number of his lands, these did not include Sheffield itself. Waltheof’s widow, Judith, retained the lordship of Hallamshire, though by the time of the Domesday survey she had leased it to Roger de Busli, lord of neighbouring Tickhill. The ancient territory was to remain a distinct entity, however, throughout the rest of the Middle Ages.

Like many of the entries in Domesday Book, that for Sheffield is relatively brief and difficult to interpret. In terms of its economic standing, we can say little more than that it was about half as productive as it had been at the time of the Conquest. Whether this means that the settlement was caught up in William’s destructive revenge against rebellious landowners in this region known as the ‘Harrying of the North’, we may never know. However, what is fairly clear is that Sheffield was at this time one of a number of fairly equally sized settlements in Hallamshire, among which Attercliffe and Grimesthorpe were specifically named, and which between them had sufficient resources to support a population of about 1,400 people. There is good reason to believe that the extent of Hallamshire (described as being 10 leagues by 8) was similar to the boundaries of modern Sheffield. The site of Waltheof’s manor house within Hallamshire was not explicitly mentioned but was most likely on the site bounded by the confluence of the rivers Sheaf and Don chosen by the later builders of Sheffield Castle. The Norman lord of Sheffield, Roger de Busli, probably erected a motte-and-bailey earthwork fortification on the site, similar to his main base at Tickhill and that at Bradfield in the western portion of Hallamshire.

Surviving earthworks of the motte-and-bailey castle erected at Bradfield; Sheffield Castle is likely to have begun as a similar construction.

In about 1102 the lordship of Hallamshire passed from Roger de Busli to William de Lovetot, the grandson of one of the knights who had fought alongside William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. One of de Lovetot’s first actions on obtaining the lordship would have been to fortify the existing defensive earthworks between the Sheaf and Don, laying the foundations for a mighty castle that was to dominate the northern approach to Sheffield for the next 500 years. That approach was made by way of the bridge across the Don built by de Lovetot, which became known as Lady’s Bridge in reference to the chapel in honour of the Virgin Mary that was established on its northern side. The thoroughfare continued up Spital Hill, the road taking its name from the leper hospital built by de Lovetot in the vicinity.

In surveying his new territory, de Lovetot had shrewdly calculated that this strategic crossing of the River Don, the point where upland and lowland converged, could form the focus of settlement and communications for the wider area. It is from his time that we see the emergence of Sheffield as the dominant settlement within the historic region of Hallamshire. The upper and lower ends of the Hallam Ridge on which the town grew are still known as Hallam Head and Nether Hallam respectively and the upland area is referred to as Hallam Moors.

William de Lovetot’s development of the economy of Sheffield began with his construction of a corn mill at Millsands, of which he retained the monopoly, and most likely included the establishment of a regular market on land between his castle and the church that – almost certainly an Anglo-Saxon foundation – he had made a dependency of his monastery at Worksop. It was this sloping land between church and castle, with its market in between, that was to become the nucleus of the town of Sheffield.

Lady’s Bridge, originally leading from Sheffield Castle (left) to the Wicker (right). Medieval stonework is clearly visible within the iron structure added following the Great Flood of 1864. On the east bank of the river was a chapel dedicated to Our Lady that gave the crossing its name.

As part of the process of bringing their estates together, the Norman lords of Hallamshire established a number of churches in the area. In addition to Sheffield itself, these were at Ecclesfield in the north, Handsworth in the east and Bradfield (next to their earthwork castle) in the west. Immediately after the Conquest it was Ecclesfield that was chosen to serve as the ‘parish’ of Hallamshire (perhaps continuing a pre-Conquest arrangement), with Bradfield and Sheffield as chapels to help serve a population spread out over a vast area. By the thirteenth century, Sheffield had become a parish in its own right and included a large area from Owlerton in the north to Heeley in the south, the sparsely populated area of Upper Hallam in the west and Attercliffe in the east. To help serve this area, chapels were established at Ecclesall and Attercliffe.

Also of contemporary significance to the economy of Sheffield was the foundation of the Premonstratensian monastery of Beauchief Abbey in the late twelfth century. This French religious order (named after the French village where they originated and usually known in England as the ‘White Canons’ in reference to the colour of their habits) was granted extensive agricultural interests in the Sheffield area, as well as a corn mill at Millhouses and a number of coal mines and iron smelting works across the wider region. Through its metalworking interests in particular, the monastery was closely bound to the emerging economic development of the Hallamshire district.

Beauchief Abbey, owner of some of the earliest ironworks in the Sheffield area.