Sheffield, a municipal, parliamentary, and county borough in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in a hilly country, at the confluence of the Sheaf with the Don, 46 miles SSW. of York, 18 SW. of Doncaster, 38 S. of Leeds, 41 E. of Manchester, and 165 NNW. of London. In 1875 and the succeeding years a street improvement scheme was carried out at a cost of upwards of half a million; and now the town, generally, is well built. It possesses many fine public buildings, such as the original parish church of St Peter, supposed to have been erected in the reign of Henry I., 240 feet long by 130 feet broad; St Mary's Roman Catholic Church (1850), surmounted by a spire 195 feet high; the Albert Hall (1873), cutlers' hall, corn exchange; the new market-hall, or Norfolk Market, with a roof of glass and iron, erected in 1851 by the Duke of Norfolk at a cost of about £40,000; music-hall, assembly rooms, theatres, &c. The magnificent new municipal buildings, begun in 1891, were opened by the Queen in May 1897. There are extensive botanic gardens and several fine cemeteries; many churches; numerous educational establishments, such as the Free Grammar-school, the Wesley College (1838). The Firth College, founded in 1879 by Mark Firth (Mayor 1875), was incorporated in 1897 as University College, with arts, technical, and medical departments. The Mechanics' Institution dates from 1832. There are free and other public libraries, an Athenæum, and a Literary and Philosophical Society; and, amongst charities, an infirmary and several hospitals. Sheffield has long been noted for the manufacture of Cutlery (q.v.); and at the present day an endless variety of articles in brass, iron, and steel is produced at the many manufactories with which the town abounds, such as knives of every description, silver and plated articles, Britannia-metal goods, files, saws, &c. The introduction of the manufacture of armour-plates, railway-springs, tires, and rails, since 1871, has given a remarkable impetus to the growth of the town. Sheffield has several public parks, including the Firth Park, presented by Mr Firth, opened in 1875, and the Norfolk Park, gifted by the Duke of Norfolk (Mayor), opened in 1897, and two sets of public baths. Mr Ruskin founded the St George's Museum here (formerly at Walkley, but since 1890 in the town itself), in which he deposited an important collection of minerals, illuminated manuscripts, engravings, and drawings. Mr J. Newton Mappin bequeathed to the town a collection of pictures, and Sir F. T. Mappin, Bart., M.P., his nephew, has since added largely to the collection. The Mappin Art Gallery was erected by the executors of Mr J. N. Mappin at a cost of £15,000. Pop. (1821) 69,479; (1841) 111,091; (1861) 154,093; (1881) 284,508; (1891) 324,243.
Situated on the extreme southern border of Yorkshire, Sheffield has from Saxon times been the capital of a district known as 'Hallamshire,' which is composed of five contiguous parishes, and formed the manor of Earl Waltheof, who married the Countess Judith, the Conqueror's niece. A Norman family, who seem to have sprung from Lovetot, a small hamlet in Normandy near Fontenelle, became the resident proprietors of Sheffield and the adjacent parishes; and William de Lovetot founded a monastery at Worksop in 1103, and built a church at Sheffield. This family established a market, a hospital for the sick, a mill for grinding corn, and a bridge over the Don during their brief reign in Sheffield. The property descended to a female heir, whose hand was given in marriage by King Richard I. to Gerald Furnival, who had fought with his king at Acre. The Furnivals took the side of Henry III. in his contests with the insurgent barons, during which an expedition was formed against the town and castle of Sheffield, when many of the inhabitants were slaughtered, and the castle was burned in 1266. Four years after this disaster Thomas de Furnival rebuilt the castle. His son, of the same name, was the great benefactor to this town. Though much employed as a soldier against the Scots, he enfranchised his vassals, and gave them a court of justice and trial by jury. His grandson took part in the battle of Crécy; and his brother, who succeeded him, left an only daughter, who married Sir Thomas Nevil. This pair again left an only daughter, who married the great hero, John Talbot, first Earl of Shrewsbury, familiar from Shakespeare's Henry VI.
During the wars betwixt the rival Houses of York and Lancaster the Shrewsbury family sided with the latter, and the second earl fell in the battle of Northampton fighting for the king. His son and successor was again in arms in the same cause, but died young, and left a son, who was only five years old when he succeeded to the title and property, which he held for seventy years. This earl made Sheffield Castle a more permanent place of residence than his predecessor had done.
It was a spacious fortified building which covered four acres of ground, and fourteen acres of pleasure-grounds were attached, and stood at the northern entrance to the town betwixt the rivers Sheaf and Don. In the early part of the reign of Henry VIII. the earl built a more homelike residence about two miles from the town, in which Wolsey rested for eighteen days on his last journey (1530), and the utter ruins of which still bear the name of 'Sheffield Manour.'
The earls of Shrewsbury were amongst the very chief of the nobility of England, and the sumptuousness of living which they maintained, both at the castle and manour, was second only to that of royalty itself. Queen Elizabeth imposed on George Talbot, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, the odious responsibility of holding Queen Mary of Scotland a prisoner in his castle at Sheffield; and this lasted, with only few and short changes of abode, during the long period of fourteen years (1572-86).
The seventh Earl of Shrewsbury left three daughters, of whom only the youngest, whose husband was Thomas, Earl of Arundel, had a child. Through this son the vast estates connected with the Sheffield property became henceforth vested in a line of descendants which has made the Dukes of Norfolk owners and lords of Hallamshire. Lord Arundel was non-resident, living much abroad, and the prosperity of Sheffield deteriorated greatly owing to the withdrawal from the local markets of all such custom as two grand mansions had hitherto afforded. Whilst the noble family maintained their loyal sentiments towards the king in the national contest, the townspeople took the popular side. In August 1644 the castle was besieged and taken by the parliamentary army, and soon afterwards a resolution was passed by the government that it should be 'sleighted and demolished.'
Sheffield henceforth became dependent upon its cutlery trade. This, as the special business of the town, had existed from the earliest times. The 'Sheffield whittle' spoken of by Chaucer in the 14th century was the common knife used for all purposes by those whose social rank did not entitle them to carry a sword. It was only the commonest cutlery that was manufactured in the town, and neither swords nor daggers nor the more modern bayonet were ever made here. The Cutlers' Company, which has now a national reputation, was founded in 1624, and the cutlers' annual feast may date from about that time, having originated in the permission granted by Earl Gilbert to the 'apron men,' or working smiths, to pull down as many deer as they could kill in the park and carry away with their hands. Up to the middle of the 18th century Sheffield was a mean place, and the cutler was a poor man; the income of £100 a year was accounted as riches. But in a century from that time, with railway approaches, the use of the steam-engine, machinery of every sort, and a variety of processes for the manufacture of steel, Sheffield had risen into the position of being the 'capital of steel' in Britain, and perhaps in the world; it was the first place at which the armour-plates to protect British war-ships were rolled, and here too are cast the steel blocks which are subsequently bored and rifled for the artillery of both services.
Till 1845 the whole town was included in one parish, having a single ancient church, with five modern churches that were merely chapels of ease. There are now thirty-seven ecclesiastical parishes, with their churches and clergy. The various Non-conformist bodies, too, have rapidly increased with the growth of population. The old dissent commenced with the ejection of the Presbyterian clergy in 1662, of whose churches the Upper Chapel in Norfolk Street is now the lineal representative. Sheffield was first enfranchised by the Reform Bill of 1832; and by the bill of 1855 the borough was divided into five parliamentary districts, each being represented by one member. In March 1864 a new embankment, constructed for the Sheffield Water Company, at Bradfield, gave way, and let out a body of water 95 feet high from a reservoir 78 acres in extent. The destruction of life and property by this flood was unprecedented in England: 250 persons perished; mills, houses, and hamlets were swept away from their foundations, and, apart from the ruin of the Bradfield Dam, damage was done to private property to the extent of close upon £300,000. In 1893 Sheffield was constituted a city, and in 1897 her chief magistrate for the first time entitled Lord Mayor.
See Joseph Hunter's Hallamshire (1819; new ed. by the present writer, 1869); the latter's Sheffield, Past and Present (1873); R. E. Leader's Reminiscences of Old Sheffield (1875); and Harper's Magazine (June 1884).