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- Brief History of Rotherham
Hallamshire
Before the Roman invasion, Hallamshire lay on the confines of the territories possessed by two tribes of native Britons, the Brigantes and Coritani. A few centuries afterwards, when the Saxons had obtained possession of Britain, the men of Hallamshire found themselves placed in an unenviable situation on the borders of the two rival kingdoms of Northumbria (Deira) and Mercia. But when the Heptarchy became one sovereignty under Egbert, Hallamshire was made part of the county of York.
The extent of the territory to which the term Hallamshire is properly applicable, has been the frequent subject of discussion, but in its most restricted sense it would seem proper to confine it to what constituted the Saxon manor of Hallam;and thus it would comprehend only the three western townships of the parish of Sheffield, together with that part of the chapelry of Bradfield which is within the present manor of Sheffield. In a sense, rather less restricted, it would comprise, together with Hallam, the two smaller Saxon manors of Attercliffe and Sheffield, which in the Domesday survey are said to have been inland in Hallun. It would then include Bradfield and the whole of the parish of Sheffield, except Brightside-Bierlow. The first use of the term, which is in a charter of Richard de Lovetot, in the reign of Henry II., seems to be in one of these restricted senses; but in the hundred-rolls of the time of Edward I., North Ecclesfield is mentioned as being included within Hallamshire; and in a confirmation by Edward III, of a grant to Nicholas, a younger son of Thomas Lord Furnival, of £10 rent issuing out of Hallamshire, it is expressly stated that Sheffield, Bradfield, Ecclesfield, and Handsworth, are included under the term. This agrees with Leland, who says, Hallamshire beginneth a mile from Rotherham, and goith one way vi. or vii. miles above Sheffilde by west, yet as I here say, another way the next village to Sheffilde is in Derbyshire. Al Hallamshire go to the sessions of York, and is accounted as a member of Yorkshire.. The Bailiff of Hallamshire now executes his office in all the manors near Sheffield, which belong to the lord, His Grace of Norfolk. There is also a jurisdiction now prevailing throughout Hallamshire, created by an Act of the 21st James I, incorporating the Cutlers and other Workers in Iron, who reside in this neighbourhood. The framers of this Act, aware of the difficulty of settling precisely the limits of Hallamshire, gave power to the officers of the company, not only throughout that district, but everywhere within six miles compass of the same. The wholesome regulations of this statute, became, in modern times, inimical to the growth of the town and its manufactures, and were consequently rescinded by an Act passed in 1814; but the Cutlers Company, though stripped of the extensive powers which it held for nearly two centuries, still exists as a corporate body, holding a yearly appointment of officers, an annual festival, and some property of its own, together with the trusteeship of several charity estates. By the Reform Bill passed in 1832, the parish of Sheffield has been very properly raised to the rank of a Parliamentary Borough, sending two representatives to the House of Commons, and having the Master Cutler for its returning officer, and about 3,500 constituents.
Before the Norman Conquest, this parish is supposed to have been attached to the Saxon Churches of Treeton, Rotherham, and Hope. It was not till after the Normans began to find themselves secure in the possession of their newly-acquired property, that the owners of Hallamshire erected the four churches of Ecclesfleld, Bradfleld, Handsworth, and Sheffield, and assigned to the latter, the three small manors of Grimesthorpe, Attercliffe, and Sheffield, together with all that part of the vast manor of Hallam, which lay to the south of the Riveling. After the Conquest, these manors, together with many other large estates in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, became the property of one great Baron, and were consequently regarded as forming one entire manor, which was called the Manor of Sheffield,- there being the castle of its lord and the centre of population. But within two centuries after the Conquest, large tracts of this territory were granted out to different families, who claimed to exercise certain manorial privileges, and hence arose those smaller manors which are now acknowledged within the parish of Sheffield. The most considerable of these is that fertile and populous township called Ecclesall-Bierlow, of which the venerable Earl Fitzwilliam is the present lord. The estate of Shirecliffe, a part of the old manor of Grimesthorpe, was also held of the castle and manor of Sheffield, by the family of Mounteney , descended of the blood of the Lovetots, who had the hall and park there; but it is now unknown as a separate manor, being absorbed into the greater manor out of which it originally proceeded, by the purchase of George, Earl of Shrewsbury , in the reign of Elizabeth. The little manor of Darnall, now the property of the heirs of the late General Spencer, seems to have been a part of the old manor of Attercliffe. A small part of the manor of Owlerton, belonging to Lady Montague, extends into the parish of Sheffield. But none of these manors are noticed in the Nomina Villarum of the 9th of Edward I which speaks only of the manor of Sheffield then held by Thomas de Fourayvayle, to whom it had descended from the Lovetots. Of this feudal chieftain, the present Duke of Norfolk is the lineal descendant and representative.He enjoys the manor of Sheffield, and with it an immense estate, through an unbroken line of splendid ancestry, - Lovetots, Furnivals, Nevils, Talbots, and Howards, reaching to the first century after the Conquest. The chiefs of this proud line, had, during four or five centuries, their principal residence at the Castle of Sheffield. But the presence of a noble family, combined with the remains of feudal subjection, paralized the exertions of the artisans of Sheffield, and it was not till after the third daughter and co-heiress of Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury, had carried the Hallamshire estates (in the 17th century) to the Howards of Arundel, that they were released from these trammels,- that the castle which subsequently fell in the ruin of the civil wars was abandoned by its lord,- that the park enclosures gave way to the spirit of commerce, and that the town began to show symptoms of its approximation to that high and important rank which it now holds amongst the populous seats of trade and manufactures ia this great kingdom. So late as 1615, it was the abode of a congregated mass of pauperism and dependence, for we find by an enumeration in that year, that its inhabitants amounted to 2,207 souls; 725 of which were begging poor; 100 householders who relieved others; 160 householders not able to relieve others; and 1,222 children and servants.
Source :History and General Directory of Sheffield with Rotherham and Chesterfield, William White.Publication date: 1833
Professor Glanville Jones has shown that a Celtic 'federal estate' had three points of focus; the administrative centre, the ecclesiastical centre, and the retreat in times of crisis. The retreat of the people of Hallamshire was the hill-fort at Wincobank, which protected the Don crossing, and which had once caused the Romans to delay their northern advance and to build their own fort on the opposite side of the river at Templeborough. The ecclesiastical centre is undoubtedly to be identified with Ecclesfield, whose name is derived from ecc the Celtic word for a church. There may even have been a pre-Christian cult centre here, for a Celtic stone head of the type used in pagan ceremonies has been discovered in the lower end of the village. Ecclesfield vast parish covered nearly 50,000 acres and included the huge chapelry of Bradfield. Not for nothing was the church known in 1620 as The Minster of the Moors .Its parish had once been even larger, for it had originally served the whole of Hallamshire. As late as 1188 the monks of the Norman abbey of St Wandrille claimed that Sheffield was a chapel dependent upon their church at Ecclesfield and though Sheffield eventually became an independent parish, its former inferior status was acknowledged in 1291 and 1376. The monks also maintained that Whiston, which lay beyond Hallamshire to the south of Rotherham, was one of their chapelries. Furthermore, Aldwark Hall, to the north of Rotherham, remained a detached portion of the parish of Ecclesfield until the reign of Queen Victoria.
The third focal point of Hallamshire was the administrative centre, where, at the time of the Domesday Survey, Earl Waltheof had an aula, or hall. The meaning of the name Hallam is ambiguous, and the possible explanations do not help with the identification of the site. The absence of any earthwork, settlement, or convincing documentary evidence argues against the claims put forward for Hallam Head, and the best defensive site was undoubtedly at the confluence of the Sheaf and the Don at Sheffield, where the Normans erected their castle. Excavations under the Castle Market have revealed the presence of an Anglo-Saxon timber building of at least three bays, supported on crucks. It was almost certainly the aula of Waitheof. It was defended by steep slopes rising from the rivers and by a ditch to theeast and the south. Fragments of eleventh-century pottery have been found at the bottom ofthis ditch. Topographical considerations enhance the claims of this site. In the Quo Warranto enquiries of the late thirteenth century, Thomas de Furnival, the lord of Sheffield, claimed among other things that his ancestors had enjoyed the privilege of a market and the right to hunt on their estates from the time of the conquest. This means that both the market and the park were in existence long before William de Lovetot erected his castle about the year 1100. Their relationship with the castle site is, therefore, of significance. The park lay directly across the River Sheaf from the castle, stretching from the Hallamshire boundary in the south to the Roman road from Lincoln to Chester in the north. It covered 2,461 acres and was the largest in South Yorkshire. The market occupied a large, rectangular site that lay across the Roman road immediately to the south of the castle. It is, of course, possible that de Lovetot created a new park and laid out a new market place upon building his castle, but a more likely explanation of these sites is that they are ancient ones that were associated with the aula of Waltheof.
Sheffield, Ecclesfield and Wincobank seem to have been the three original centres of Hallamshire, and the experience of this 'shire' suggests the truth of the idea that, although administrative arrangements were in a constant state of flux, the basic framework often remained intact from Celtic times until well after the Norman conquest.
> Lordship of Hallamshire
Source :The Makings of South Yorkshire, David Hey. Publication date: 1979.
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