The early history of Escafeld
The area that is now the City of Sheffield has been occupied since at least the last ice age, but the settlements that grew to form Sheffield date from the second half of the 1st millennium, and are of Anglo-Saxon and Danish origin. In Anglo-Saxon times the Sheffield area straddled the border between the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that King Eanred of Northumbria submitted to King Egbert of Wessex at the hamlet of Dore (now a suburb of Sheffield) in 829. This event made Egbert the first Saxon to claim to be king of all of England. After the Norman conquest, Sheffield Castle was built to control the local settlements, and a small town developed that is the nucleus of the modern city.
By 1296 a market had been established at what is now known as Castle Square, and Sheffield subsequently grew into a small market town, Escafeld. In the 14th century Sheffield was already noted for the production of knives, as mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and by 1600 it had become the main centre of cutlery production in England, overseen by The Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire. From 1570 to 1584 Mary, Queen of Scots was held as a prisoner in Sheffield Castle and Sheffield Manor.
In the 1740s a form of the crucible steel process was discovered that allowed the manufacture of a better quality of steel than had previously been available. At about the same time a technique for fusing a thin sheet of silver onto a copper ingot to produce silver plating was invented and became widely known as Sheffield plate. These innovations spurred the growth of Sheffield as an industrial town. However, the loss of some important export markets led to a recession in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The resulting poor conditions culminated in a cholera epidemic that killed 402 people in 1832. The industrial revolution saw a resurgence of Sheffield through the 19th century. As a result of its growing population, the town was incorporated as a Borough in 1842 and granted a city charter in 1893.
A recession in the 1930s was only halted by the increasing international tension as World War II loomed. The steel factories of Sheffield were set to work making weapons and ammunition for the war. As a result, once war was declared, the city became a target for bombing raids, the heaviest of which occurred over the nights of 12 December and 15 December 1940 (now known as the Sheffield Blitz). More than 660 lives were lost and numerous buildings were destroyed.
Sheffield Cutlery
Sheffield has a long history of metals processing and engineering: Chaucer remarked upon the quality of Sheffield made knives as early as 1380 and the development of steel is inextricably linked with local names such as Huntsman, Firth and Breary, Bessemer, Brown and Sorby.
In The Reeve's Tale, written in the 1380s, Chaucer tells of the miller of Trumpington possessing a 'Sheffeld thwitel baar' in his hose:
Ay by his belt he baar a long panade,
And of a swerd ful trenchant was the blade.
A joly poppere baar he in his pouche;
Ther was no man, for peril, dorste hym touche.
A Sheffeld thwitel baar he in his hose.
Round was his face, and camus was his nose.
In modern English, that translates as something like:
Always in his leathern belt he did parade
A sword with a long trenchant blade.
In his pocket he carried a pretty knife;
No man who dared to touch him, on loss of life.
A long knife from Sheffield he carried in his hose;
Round was his face and turned-up was his nose.
Already famous in Chaucer's day, Sheffield's knives continue to excel to this day, and sadly, are also counterfeited worldwide.
Created on 11/01/2006 08:02 PM by admin
Updated on 11/05/2006 02:51 PM by admin
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