The History of Sheffield
I am sure that the history of Sheffield can fill several libraries but this page must be necessarily brief. The earliest settlements were on the lower slopes a spur of the Hallam Ridge overlooking the valleys of the Rivers Don and Sheaf. I could be well wrong about this but there seems to have been no Roman fort or settlement here.
Equally I have little knowledge of Sheffield through the Dark Ages when it was known as Escafeld, the field by the River Sheaf, though I am sure there must be something. After 1066 William the Conqueror gave the Manor of Hallamshire to William de Lovetot. The de Lovetot family built a motte and bailey castle near the conjunction of the rivers and a church (on the site of the present cathedral) a bit further up the hill. A small town grew up between the two.
The de Furnivals who were Lords of Hallamshire in the 13th and 14th Centuries had the castle rebuilt in stone. In 1281 Thomas de Furnival claimed hunting rights over a vast area (2460 acres) called the Deer Park which extended from the town centre. This stretched east to Gleadless, Handsworth and Darnall, from Healey along the Sheaf Valley to the south and west, and along the Don to the north. Deer parks were hunting ground for the Lord and his mates. If ordinary mortals were caught there, poaching or non-poaching, they were likely to be strung up without further enquiry. The de Furnivals granted a charter to the town in 1297.
In the 15th Century the Talbot family were Lords of the Manor of Hallamshire. In 1442 Henry V granted the title Earl of Shrewsbury to ? Talbot. The most famous member of the family was the 4th Earl who was married (acrimoniously) to Bess of Hardwick and was keeper of Mary, Queen of Scots. The queen lived out many of the years of her captivity in Shrewsbury properties including Sheffield Manor and Sheffield Castle.
In 1617 the family of Talbot, Earls of Shrewsbury failed in the direct male line. The title passed to a distant branch of the family but the three daughters inherited much of the estate. The youngest of these, Alethea married Thomas Howard Earl of Arundel and Surrey. The Sheffield area, along with Rotherham, therefore passed under to the control of the Howards (as if they didn't control enough already). This branch of the Howard family eventually became Dukes of Norfolk.
Sheffield Castle was slighted (destroyed) in the 1640s by Parliamentary forces after they won the English Civil War.
Iron founding must have been ongoing for a long time in Sheffield as by the Middle Ages Sheffield was renowned for its arms making, swords, daggers and the like. Tools, then later the cutlery for which Sheffield is still famous, were made here.
With the arrival of mass production techniques in the 17th Century industry in the town began to expand rapidly. In fact it rapidly expanded into a city gobbling up many outlying hamlets and villages. Sheffield became a city made prosperous by manufacturing industry; iron and steel, engineering, tools, cutlery and many more.
Much of Sheffield city centre was destroyed during the Second World War and a lot more of the historic buildings have been destroyed by the Council in the years since then. There is not a lot of Old Sheffield to see nowadays. I worked in Sheffield for some years and lived there for many more. I have been trying to remember and pinpoint just when it started to become rather shoddy and run down but I've failed to find a defining moment. The gradual decline of manufacturing industry from the 1950s onwards right up to the present day has been equalled by a decline in the city itself. The opening of the shopping mall at Meadowhall about 1998 drew much retail trade away from the city centre. I have to say here that I have not been up to Sheffield for a few years now so thing might be looking up, or then again they might not. I had to go up the the Probate Office in 2009 and though I only saw the bottom end of town, it didn't look as if things were on the up.
The present borough of Sheffield runs from High Green in the north to Totley, Gleadless, Mosborough and Halfway in the south: from the foothills of the Pennines and Stocksbridge in the west to Tinsley and Beighton in the east. A good deal of this consists of built up areas but one good thing that I can say about the city is that is full of parks and open areas. If you look down on Sheffield from any of the surrounding hillsides (but not in the middle of winter) it is a city full of greenness.
This is as far as I am delving into the History of Sheffield but if you are interested visit the Sheffield websites for more.