Sheffield
Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, situated south of Leeds and east of Manchester. The city is the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire. It is the largest settlement in South Yorkshire, and the third largest in Northern England.
The city is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines and the valleys of the River Don with its four tributaries: the Loxley, the Porter Brook, the Rivelin and the Sheaf. Sixty-one per cent of Sheffield's entire area is green space and a third of the city lies within the Peak District national park and it is the fifth-largest city in England. There are more than 250 parks, woodlands and gardens in the city, which is estimated to contain around 4.5 million trees.
Sheffield played a crucial role in the Industrial Revolution, developing many significant technologies. In the 19th century, the city saw a huge expansion of its traditional cutlery trade, when processes for high-quality stainless steel and crucible steel were invented. This fuelled an almost tenfold increase in the population. Sheffield received its municipal charter in 1843, becoming the City of Sheffield in 1893. International competition in iron and steel caused a decline in these industries in the 1970s and 1980s, coinciding with the collapse of coal mining in the area. The Yorkshire ridings became counties in their own right in 1889; the West Riding of Yorkshire county was disbanded in 1974. The city then became part of the county of South Yorkshire; this has been made up of separately governed unitary authorities since 1986. The 21st century has seen extensive redevelopment in Sheffield, consistent with other British cities. Sheffield's gross value added has increased by 60% since 1997, standing at £11.3 billion in 2015. The economy has experienced steady growth, averaging around 5% annually, which is greater than that of the broader region of Yorkshire and the Humber.
Sheffield had a population of 556,500 at the 2021 census, making it the second-largest city in the Yorkshire and the Humber region. The Sheffield Built-up Area, of which the Sheffield sub-division is the largest part, had a population of 685,369 also including the town of Rotherham. The district borough, governed from the city, had a population of at the mid-2019 estimate, making it the List of English districts by population|-most-populous district in England. It is one of eleven British cities that make up the Core Cities Group. In 2011, the unparished area had a population of 490,070.
The city has a long sporting heritage and is home both to the world's oldest football club, Sheffield F.C., and the world's oldest football ground, Sandygate. Matches between the two professional clubs, Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday, are known as the Steel City derby. The city is also home to the World Snooker Championship and the Sheffield Steelers, the UK's first professional ice hockey team.
Etymology
Sheffield takes its name from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city centre. The river's name comes from the Old English word scēað, meaning "boundary", possibly because the Sheaf once formed part of the boundary between the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. The second element is Old English feld, meaning "open countryside", and the name thus means "open countryside near the River Sheaf". It first appears in the Domesday Book.History
Early history
The area now occupied by the City of Sheffield is believed to have been inhabited since at least the late Upper Paleolithic, about 12,800 years ago. The earliest evidence of human occupation in the Sheffield area was found at Creswell Crags to the east of the city. In the Iron Age the area became the southernmost territory of the Pennine tribe called the Brigantes. It is this tribe who are thought to have constructed several hillforts in and around Sheffield.Following the departure of the Romans, the Sheffield area may have been the southern part of the Brittonic kingdom of Elmet, with the rivers Sheaf and Don forming part of the boundary between this kingdom and the kingdom of Mercia. Gradually, Anglian settlers pushed west from the kingdom of Deira. A Britonnic presence within the Sheffield area is evidenced by two settlements called Wales and Waleswood close to Sheffield. The settlements that grew and merged to form Sheffield, however, date from the second half of the first 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 Eanred of Northumbria submitted to Egbert of Wessex at the hamlet of Dore in 829, a key event in the unification of the kingdom of England under the House of Wessex.
After the Norman conquest of England, insurrection by the populace led to the devastation of the Sheffield area during the Harrying of the North and Sheffield Castle was built to control the ruined local settlements. 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. In the 14th century, Sheffield was already noted for the production of knives, as mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and by the early 1600s it had become the main centre of cutlery manufacture in England outside London, overseen by the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire.
From 1570 to 1584, Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned in Sheffield Castle and Sheffield Manor by George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, the husband of Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury. The Earl is buried in Sheffield Cathedral.
Industrial Revolution
During 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 possible. In about the same period, a technique was developed for fusing a thin sheet of silver onto a copper ingot to produce silver plating, which became widely known as Sheffield plate. These innovations spurred Sheffield's growth as an industrial town, but 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 population of the town grew rapidly throughout the 19th century; increasing from 60,095 in 1801 to 451,195 by 1901. The Sheffield and Rotherham railway was constructed in 1838, connecting the two towns. The town was incorporated as a borough in 1842, and was granted city status by letters patent in 1893. The influx of people also led to demand for better water supplies, and a number of new reservoirs were constructed on the outskirts of the town.The collapse of the dam wall of one of these reservoirs in 1864 resulted in the Great Sheffield Flood, which killed 270 people and devastated large parts of the town. In 1880 ten men from Sheffield were part of a group of 47 men who had attended a fancy-dress ball in Hulme, Manchester, but they were tried for soliciting sex between men. Described by historian Lauren Wells as the 'Sheffield Ten', men from the city had their addresses published in local news.
The growing population led to the construction of many back-to-back dwellings that, along with severe pollution from the factories, inspired George Orwell in 1937 to write: "Sheffield, I suppose, could justly claim to be called the ugliest town in the Old World".
Blitz
hit the city in the 1930s, but as international tensions increased and the Second World War became imminent, Sheffield's steel factories were set to work manufacturing weapons and ammunition for the war effort. As a result, the city became a target for bombing raids, the heaviest of which occurred on the nights of 12 and 15 December 1940, now known as the Sheffield Blitz. The city was partially protected by barrage balloons managed from RAF Norton. More than 660 people died and many buildings were destroyed or left badly damaged, including the Marples Hotel, which was hit directly by a 500-pound bomb, killing over 70 people.Post-Second World War
In the 1950s and 1960s, many of the city's slums were demolished, and replaced with housing schemes such as the Park Hill flats. Large parts of the city centre were also cleared to make way for a new system of roads. In February 1962, the city was devastated by the Great Sheffield Gale; winds of up to killed four people and damaged 150,000 houses, more than two-thirds of the city's housing stock at the time. Increased automation and competition from abroad resulted in the closure of many steel mills. The 1980s saw the worst of this run-down of Sheffield's industries, along with those of many other areas of the UK. The building of the Meadowhall Centre on the site of a former steelworks in 1990 was a mixed blessing, creating much-needed jobs but hastening the decline of the city centre. Attempts to regenerate the city were kick-started when the city hosted the 1991 World Student Games, which saw the construction of new sporting facilities such as the Sheffield Arena, Don Valley Stadium and the Ponds Forge complex.21st century
Sheffield is changing rapidly as new projects regenerate some of the more run-down parts of the city. One such, the Heart of the City Project, with £470 million investment, has initiated a number of public works in the city centre: the Peace Gardens were renovated in 1998, the Millennium Gallery opened in April 2001, the Winter Gardens were opened in May 2003, and a public space to link these two areas, the Millennium Square, was opened in May 2006. Additional developments included the remodelling of Sheaf Square, in front of the refurbished railway station: the square contains "The Cutting Edge", a sculpture designed by Si Applied Ltd and made from Sheffield steel. Recent development known as the 'Heart of the City' includes the restoration of the listed Leah's Yard complex.Sheffield was particularly hard hit during the 2007 United Kingdom floods and the 2010 'Big Freeze'. Many landmark buildings such as Meadowhall and the Hillsborough Stadium flooded due to being close to rivers that flow through the city. In 2010, 5,000 properties in Sheffield were identified as still being at risk of flooding. In 2012 the city narrowly escaped another flood, despite extensive work by the Environment Agency to clear local river channels since the 2007 event. In 2014 Sheffield Council's cabinet approved plans to further reduce the possibility of flooding by adopting plans to increase water catchment on tributaries of the River Don. Another flood hit the city in 2019, resulting in shoppers being contained in Meadowhall Shopping Centre.
Between 2014 and 2018, there were disputes between the city council and residents over the fate of the city's 36,000 highway trees. Around 4,000 highway trees have since been felled as part of the 'Streets Ahead' Private Finance Initiative contract signed in 2012 by the city council, Amey plc and the Department for Transport to maintain the city streets. The tree fellings have resulted in many arrests of residents and other protesters across the city even though most felled trees in the city have been replanted, including those historically felled and not previously replanted. The protests eventually stopped in 2018 after the council paused the tree felling programme as part of a new approach developed by the council for the maintenance of street trees in the city.
In May 2022, Sheffield was named a "Tree City of the World" in recognition of its work to sustainably manage and maintain urban forests and trees. This honour was given before the release of the independent inquiry's report on the so-called "Sheffield Chainsaw Massacre". The report concluded that "thousands of healthy and loved trees were lost. Many more could have been" and was critical of Sheffield City Council. The latter issued this statement on receipt of the report: "the council has already acknowledged that it got many things wrong in the handling of the street-trees dispute, and we wish to reiterate our previous apologies for our failings".