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History of Sheffield
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History of Sheffield
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Sheffield can trace its history back to 600 AD when Anglo-Saxon invaders founded a settlement known as Escafeld or Scafeld - signifying 'the open space among woods by the River Sheaf'. Prior to that, in the first century AD, the Brigantes tribe had set up a hill fort in an area of the city now known as Wincobank, in a vain attempt to halt the northern march of the Roman legions. Sheffield gained a degree of self government in 1297 when the then Lord of the Manor, Thomas de Furnival, granted a charter to his free tenants.
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It was about that time that the first records of cutlery being made in the city can be traced back to a tax return for a Sheffield man known as Robert the Cutler. Three centuries later, when Mary Queen of Scots began a period of captivity in Sheffield which was to last for nearly a third of her life, almost the entire population of the city was working in the cutlery trades, in forges and at grinding wheels powered by water wheels along Sheffield's rivers and streams, the Sheaf, Don, Loxley, Rivelin and the Porter. Fifty years on, Sheffield's pre-eminence in manufcaturing cutlery and cutting tools led Parliament to pass an Act allowing the cutlers of Sheffield to establish and police minimum quality standards for their industry, regulate the training of apprentices and grant trade marks to local cutlery businesses. The Act gave official life to the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire, an organisation which continues to this day as one of the few Livery Companies outside London and is still responsible for protecting Sheffield's name by controlling its use on products and by businesses
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By the mid-1700s, Sheffield had a population of 15,000, a reputation for excellence which gave it a virtual monopoly in England for making cutlery and sharp-edged products and a name for innovation fuelled by the invention of Old Sheffield Plate, a new method for plating copper with silver created by Doncaster-born Huntsman Benjamin Hunstman, and his development of crucible steel. His invention laid the foundations for Sheffield's industrial future by making possible the creation of a new range of steel tools of superior quality to those it had been possible to make. The arrival of Turnpike Roads (replacing packhorse tracks), the development of canal transport direct to the very heart of Sheffield, and the creation of the railways helped to fuel Sheffield's industrial fame.
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Inventor extraordinaire Sir Henry Bessemer was responsible for the next major leap forward in steelmaking when, in 1859, he created the Bessemer Converter, capable of producing steel in bulk quantities.
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| Other famous steel names followed - Jessop, Hadfield, Sanderson, Osborn, Edgar Allen and Brearley, the inventor of stainless steel. Sheffield's induatral pioneers didn't just make steel, they engineered it and developed new ways of measuring, analysing and studying it. The science of metallography originated in Sheffield. Jodrell Bank's great readio telescopes were designed in the city, as was Sir Henry Plimsol's simple yet ingenious method of measuring how heavily laden a ship, which saved so many seamen's lives. |
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