Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster
Above: Historic view of Sheffield Town Hall from an old posctard
Sheffield, situated at the point where the River Sheaf meets the River Don is mostly a product of the Victorian age but the surrounding area was important in ancient times. An Ancient British Celtic fortress was located nearby at Wincobank, now a north Sheffield subburb and other Celtic forts existed in the area at Carl Wark on Hathersage Moor near Dore, to the south west of Sheffield, and at Scholes Wood near Rotherham.
Archaeolgical evidence suggests that the fort at Wincobank was destroyed by a fierce fire, perhaps in Roman or Anglo-Saxon times. In Roman times the area around Sheffield lay in the southern most territory of the Pennine tribe called the Brigantes. To the south of here lay the territory of a rival tribe called the Coritani who inhabited a large area of the north eastern midlands.
In early Anglo-Saxon times Welsh speaking Celts may have held out against the Anglo-Saxon invaders from northern Europe and the Sheffield area may have remained for a time within a Celtic kingdom called Elmet (See Leeds) which survived in the early Anglo-Saxon period. Another Celtic kingdom survived for a time on Hatfield Chase near Doncaster to the north. Without doubt the clearest indication of Celtic survival in the area is the village called WALES which lies a few miles to the south east of Sheffield close to the Derbyshire border. (Other Welsh place names in Yorkshire include Craven, Pen-y-ghent and the name of Leeds).
The Celtic area around Sheffield was eventually absorbed by the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria and the fields around the Sheaf (hence Sheffield) were perhaps one of the last areas to be captured by Northumbria. Sheffield would always lie right at the very southern edge of the Northumbrian kingdom. Today it lies on the very southern edge of the northern English region called Yorkshire near the border with the midland counties of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Remains from the Anglo-Saxon era have been found in Sheffield in the area where a castle was built in later times.
A ridge (known as Roman Ridge) running from Sheffield north to Mexborough formed part of the frontier of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria. The frontier was built by the Northumbrian kings to mark the border with the neighbouring Anglo-Saxon kingdom called Mercia. It is interesting to note that the Anglo-Saxon river name Sheaf means 'boundary-river' and this may also have formed part of the boundary of Northumbria. It may equally have been the boundary of Elmet in an earlier period.
Other rivers forming Northumbrian boundaries were the Humber to the east and the Mersey to the west. Mersey like the Sheaf is an Anglo-Saxon river name which means 'boundary-river'. We also know for certain that the place called DORE , now the most south westerly subburb of Sheffield was right on the boundary between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia, where it formed a 'door - a Pennine pass between the two kingdoms. Dore was a metting place between the Kings of Mercia and the Kings of Northumbria.Today Dore lies close to the boundaries of Yorkshire and Derbyshire.
Sheffield was the site of a medieval castle founded by a Norman called William de Lovelot but this castle was destroyed at the end of the Civil War The site is now occupied by shops. Very little if anything apart form the cathedral-church survives from medieval times.
Rebuilt by the Furnival family, Sheffield Castle was for many centuries the home to the Earls of Shrewsbury until 1516 when one of the earls built himself a manor house (Sheffield Manor), which has like the castle now gone. Both the castle and the manor, (mainly the castle) were for fourteen years a place of imprisonent for Mary, Queen of Scots, who was imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth I. Mary was also imprisoned for a time at Bolton Castle in Wensleydale. Mary's sympathetic guardian at Sheffield Castle, was the Sixth Earl of Shrewsbury. He was famous for being the fourth husband of Bess of Hardwick (1507-1608), one of the wealthiest women in England.
Sheffield Cathedral was the parish church of St Peter and St Paul until Sheffield became a diocese in 1914. The church was extended in the 1950s and 60s and although the church is of Norman origin, most of the oldest sections are fifteenth century. Inside the church are a number of monuments to the Earls of Shrewsbury. (Sheffield also has a Roman Catholic Cathedral - St Marie - which was built in 1850)
The only other notable medieval feature in Sheffield is the remaining tower of Beauchief Abbey near Dore in south west Sheffield. The abbey was founded in 1175 and although only the tower remains, stone from the abbey was used in building Beauchief's seventeenth century church of St Thomas. Beauchief Abbey was the only Premonstratensian abbey in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
Sheffield has been famous for the making of steel since at least the fourteenth century when one of Chaucer's pilgrims is described as carrying a Sheffield Thwitel in his hose.The proximity of iron ore, streams for power and suitable grinding stones made Sheffield an ideal centre for steel making. In the sixteenth century Sheffield began to increasingly specialise in making cutlery with the arrival of Flemish immigrants and the following century in 1624 a Company of Cutlers was established.
In the 1740s Benjamin Huntsman (1704-1776), a Sheffield man born to German parents made huge improvements to the steel making technique at Handsworth in the east of the city. Huntsman was a mechanic and an expert in making steel springs and pendulums for watches, but was unhappy with the quality of the steel. His new steel making process involved the use of a crucible, but his high quality steel was rejected by the Cutlers of Sheffield who refused to use his steel on the grounds that it was too hard to work. Huntsman exported his steel to France and from there French knives made of Huntsman's steel were exported back into England and outsold the work of the Sheffield cutlers. At first the cutlers tried to stop Huntsman from exporting but by 1750 his secret manufacturing methods had been discovered and were copied by other Sheffield cutlers -from here on the Sheffield steel industry boomed.
Steel making improvements continued in Victorian times particularly with the development of the Bessemer process of making steel in the 1850s. This was good fortune for the west Riding town of Sheffield, but a setback for the up the coming iron making town of Middlesbrough in the North Riding of Yorkshire, which was not able to effectively adopt this process until the 1870s. The Bessemer process was invented by Henry Bessemer (1813-98) who set up a steelworks at Sheffield.
The next major event in the history of steel making was the making of Stainless Steel which was pioneered at Sheffield in 1903 - although it was developed in Germany and the USA at around the same time.
Sheffield was a major centre for the manufacture of armaments during the first and second world wars and was a target for enemy bombing, suffering much wartime damage.
In 1742, about the same time as Huntsman was making his discoveries, a Sheffield man called Thomas Bolsouver (1704-1788) pioneered the making of Sheffield Plate made by fusing silver and copper ingots and rolling them together. A thin sheet of silver was placed above and below the copper to make a sandwich and the whole sandwich was heated and rolled. It was at first used in the making of buttons but was soon adopted for making, pots, cheap silver plates and many other items. Sheffield Plate was known and used throughout the world, but was ultimately superceeded by the electroplating process discovered in 1840.
MODERN AND VICTORIAN SHEFFIELD
Sheffield grew most rapidly in the nineteenth century and its population growth was as follows; 1700 -5500; 1736 9700; 1801 31000; 1841 68000.The major Victorian building in Sheffield is the Town Hall by E.W.Mountford appropriately crowned by a statue of Vulcan - the Roman god of metal and fire. The town hall was built in 1890 and extended in 1923. It incorporates many architectural features including two large figures representing electricity and steam. They are holding a scroll of fame that includes the famous figures of Watt, Stephenson, Faraday, Davy and Swan.
Other features of Sheffield include the 1932 City Hall, the University - chartered in 1905 and the famous out of town Meadowhall Shopping Centre (on the site of a steel works). To travel back in time it is possible to visit the Abbeydale Industrial hamlet to the south west. This is a museum based around a restored scythe factory of 1742.
Rotherham lies in the coal mining district of South Yorkshire to the north east of Sheffield and grew principally as an iron, steel and brass producing centre. Its main historical features are a very large fifteenth century church and a chapel dating from 1483 located on an old bridge across the River Don. The church was made collegiate by a native of Rotherham called Thomas Scot in 1483. Scot was a Chancellor of England and an Archbishop of York. His tomb is located in York Minster.
A few miles to the east of Rotherham is Maltby and the neighbouring ruins of Roche Abbey. This was a Cistercian foundation established in 1147 by Richard de Busli of Tickhill Castle and Richard Fitzurgis. The abbey was settled by monks from Newminster Abbey near Morpeth, Northumberland. Newminster was itself founded by monks from Fountain Abbey near Ripon. Roche Abbey fell into ruin in the reign of King Henry VIII following the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Conisborough, the site of Conisborough Castle is a town halfway between Rotherham and Doncaster. The castle overlooks the River Don close to where it is joined by the Dearne and is believed to be located on the site of Anglo-Saxon earthworks. The castle may have been built by Hameline Warrenne in the reign of Richard I. He also built the neighbouring chapel which was featured in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Conisborough Castle is now a National Trust property.
Barnsley lies to the north of Sheffield and to the south of Wakefield and is principally a town of the Victorian age, but its history does go back further. In Anglo-Saxon times it was the ley or clearing belonging to someone called Beorn - 'Beorn's ley' and the place is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1089. In the following century a Cluniac priory was established in the Dearne valley just to the east in 1154, but the abbey is now a ruin.
The Dearne is the river of Barnsley, rising south of Dewsbury and east of Huddersfield, flowing east through Barnsley before joining the Don at Conisborough between Rotherham and Doncaster. Other historic features in Barnsley include a May Day Green market established in Barnsley in 1249 and a Grammar School established in 1660, although scholars no longer use the original building.
Barnsley is best known as the heart of the old South Yorkshire coalfield and there are many mining towns and villages in the area like neighbouring Darfield where a monument commemorates the 189 men and boys buried alive at Ludhill Colliery in 1857. Barnsley was principally famous for coal and iron and it grew in the Victorian age - its population of 1801 3,600 growing to 10,000 in 1831 and to 30,000 in 1881. Its present day population is somewhere in the region of 80,000. Famous sons of Barnsley include a Victorian railway engineer called Joseph Locke, who was an apprentice to George Stephenson and the missionary James Hudson Taylor who tried to convert the Chinese to Christianity.
Doncaster is known to have been the site of a Roman fort which was probably called Danum. The fort was located somewhere near the River Don and traces of a Roman iron and pottery industry have been found in the neighbourhood. In Anglo-Saxon times the Kings of Northumbria are thought to have established a palace at Doncaster but it was attacked and destroyed by the Danes in a later century.
Medieval Doncaster lay around the area of St George's Church. The church was built between 1854 and 1858 by Gilbert Scott on the site of an earlier medieval church destroyed by fire. Almost cathedral-like in appearance, it is one of the tallest parish churches in Yorkshire.
Doncaster was granted a charter by Richard I and it became the site of a medieval Friary, but Doncaster's real heyday was in the eighteenth century. Horse racing began at Doncaster in this period and races have been held in the town since at least 1703. The famous St Leger race, older than Epsom's Derby, commenced in 1778, two years after the Doncaster racecourse grandstand was built by John Carr, the famous Yorkshire architect. Other buildings dating from the Georgian period include Doncaster's Mansion House, built for the Mayor of Doncaster by James Paine between 1745 and 1748.
ADWICK, BURGHWALLIS AND HATFIELD
Adwick-le-Street to the north of Doncaster was for two centuries the home of the Washingtons, ancestors of George Washington who originally came from Washington in County Durham. The town has a Norman church and is situated on the site of an old Roman road. A Celtic ridge system called 'Roman Ridge' runs nearby north towards Pontefract. It may have protected the boundaries of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria and the Celtic kingdoms of Elmet or Hatfield (Meicen). Burhwallis nearby may also be associated with this area - its could mean Welsh fort as the Celtic Britons spoke Welsh, but in the 12th century it is known to have belonged to the Waleys family. Their surname also means 'Welsh'.
Burghwallis and neighbouring Campsall are situated in Barnsdale Forest and both places are associated with the legendary Robin Hood who is supposed to have been active in the area. This neighbourhood's claim to Robin Hood is as strong as, if not stronger than Nottinghamshire's Sherwood Forest.
Hatfield, to the north east of Doncaster lies close to the sparesly populated and poorly drained Isle of Axholme which forms the border with Lincolnshire. The area around Hatfield was known in the Anglo-Saxon days of Bede as Haethfelth (Heath - field) and was synonomous with a Celtic region called Meicen (not to be confused with Mercia) which held out against the Anglo-Saxons for some time.
In 633 AD the area was the site of the Battle of Hatfield in which the powerful Northumbrian King called Edwin was defeated by Penda, King of the Mercians (the midlands). The king's head was laid in a small chapel in York which was later to become the site of York Minster. In later centuries Hatfield became the site of a manor and a famous Bishop of Durham called Thomas Hatfield was born here. His tomb lies below the bishops' throne in Durham Cathedral. For most of its history the land surrounding Hatfield known as Hatfield Chase. the chase was a swampy, fenland area and stretched far into Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire.
Much of the land was drained in the seventeenth century by a Dutchman called Cornelius Vermuyden who also created the Dutch River at Goole just to the north of Hatfield. During his drainage activities the Dutchman was fired upon by the fenmen who also tried to destroy his dykes.
Hatfield village itself has a Norman church of the 12th century with 15th century tower. Seven miles north west of Hatfield is the little village of Fenwick - its name means Fen Farm and is thought to be the place of origin for the surname Fenwick, now most closely associated with Northumberland.
BAWTRY, AUSTERFIELD AND TICKHILL
Bawtry on the River Idle is a former coaching town of Georgian origin centred around a Market place that resembles a High street. It lies south of Doncaster and east of Rotherham on the border with Lincolnshire and was one of the main points of entry into Yorkshire from the south. In historic times Kings and Queens were often greeted at Bawtry as they entered Yorkshire.
The River Idle on which Bawtry stands is mostly a Lincolnshire river and is a tributary of the River Trent, joining the Trent to the north of the Lincolnshire town of Gainsborough as it makes its way towards the Humber.
Austerfield village, just to the north of Bawtry was the birthplace of William Bradford, a Puritan who had to flee to Holland to escape religous persecution. He later sailed with the Pilgrim Fathers to America in 1620 and went on to become the second governor of Plymouth, New England. He kept a diary of his journey, which is now a very important document of American history. He died in 1657.
Tickhill to the west of Austerfield is a mile from the Nottinghamshire boder and has a fine church dating between the 11th and 15th century. It was once the site of a castle of which their are scant remains including a moat. The castle was built by Roger de Busli or de Bully who owned the estates here from the time of the Norman conquest. He also founded the abbey of Roche near Rotherham. Tickhill castle was later visited by Henry I, Henry II and Prince John . The castle was garrisoned by Charles I but destroyed by Parliament at the end of the Civil War. Tickhill itself is centred around a market place with a notable market cross of 1766.
