sheff.events

The Sheffield Story

A timeline of Sheffield

From a manor in the Domesday Book to the trams going back into public hands: the events that made this city what it is, in order, with what happened, why it mattered and where the claim comes from.

Sheffield's story is unusually easy to follow, because it is mostly one story told again and again: a place with fast water and good stone learns to make an edge, gets very good at it, gets rich, gets crowded, gets ill, invents something nobody expected, is bombed for it, loses the industry in a decade, and then has to work out what it is instead. Everything below hangs on that thread.

Two kinds of entry share the page and each one says which it is. Entries marked "written here" are the landmarks: each was checked against the named source before it went in, and the source is linked so you can go and read it. Entries marked "from the open record" come straight out of the public datasets this site already stores, so they change on their own as those datasets change.

Where sources disagree about a date or a number, the entry says so rather than picking the tidier answer. Sheffield has plenty of much-repeated stories that nobody can actually source, and those have been left out. If you can source one, tell us and it goes in.

1086 to 1499 Before the steel

Sheffield begins as a manor in the hills where two rivers meet, on poor farming land with fast water, good stone and iron and charcoal close by. Those are exactly the things you need to make and sharpen blades, and within two centuries of the Domesday survey there is already a man in the tax records known simply as the cutler. The town is small and nobody outside Yorkshire has heard of it, but the trade that will define it for the next seven hundred years has already started.

  1. Sheffield appears in the Domesday Book

    The Domesday survey records the manor of Hallam, the land the city now stands on, at the point where the Sheaf runs into the Don.

    Why it mattered It is the first time the place is written down at all. Everything on this page is dated forward from here.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: History of Sheffield, Wikipedia

  2. A stone castle at the meeting of the rivers

    Work on a stone castle began after 1266 and took about four years to finish.

    Why it mattered The castle fixed the town in place and made Sheffield the centre of the lordship of Hallamshire rather than one more village in it.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: History of Sheffield, Wikipedia

  3. Robert the Cutler pays his tax

    The earliest official record of cutlery making in Sheffield is a tax return of 1297 submitted for a man recorded as Robert the Cutler.

    Why it mattered The trade that defined the city for the next six hundred years is already here, named, and paying tax, four centuries before the first steelworks.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Sheffield, Wikipedia

  4. Chaucer gives a character a Sheffield blade

    By the 1300s Sheffield knives were known well enough outside Yorkshire for Geoffrey Chaucer to put one in The Canterbury Tales.

    Why it mattered A national reputation for one product, earned before the town had a charter, a bank or a made road to anywhere.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Sheffield, Wikipedia

1500 to 1739 The cutlers take charge

For most of this period Sheffield is a town owned by a lord and run, in practice, by its tradesmen. A queen is held prisoner here for fourteen years, the Civil War takes the castle away, and the cutlers organise themselves into a company with the legal power to set standards and stamp marks on blades. That is the moment the word Sheffield starts to mean something on a piece of steel rather than just somewhere on a map.

  1. Mary, Queen of Scots is held in Sheffield

    George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, brought Mary to Sheffield in 1570, and she spent most of the next fourteen years imprisoned in the castle and the manor buildings above it.

    Why it mattered For fourteen years a small Yorkshire town held the most closely watched prisoner in England, and the ruins of the manor lodge are still there to walk around.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: History of Sheffield, Wikipedia

  2. The Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire is formed

    A company was established to oversee the cutlery trade of the district, set its standards and grant the marks stamped on finished blades. It still exists.

    Why it mattered Quality control with legal teeth. From this point the word Sheffield on a blade is a claim somebody can be held to, which is the whole basis of the city's reputation.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: History of Sheffield, Wikipedia

  3. The castle is slighted

    After the Civil War the castle was deliberately demolished, or slighted, so that it could never be held against Parliament again.

    Why it mattered Sheffield lost its fortress and its lordly centre. What grew back on the site was not a great house but a market, and then a town of workshops.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: History of Sheffield, Wikipedia

People born here in these years

From Wikidata, which holds the dates. Portraits link to their Wikimedia Commons file page, where the licence and the photographer are recorded.

See the era for yourself

Digitised books, maps and pictures published in these years, from the Internet Archive. Each item states its own rights on its page.

1740 to 1829 Crucible steel and Sheffield plate

Within a few years of each other, two men in Sheffield work out how to make a better steel and how to make silverware affordable. Neither is a factory owner and neither sets out to change an industry. What follows is a town that sells not just skill but materials nobody else can make, worked by thousands of self-employed craftsmen renting a bench and a share of a waterwheel. Sheffield grows fast, and almost none of the growth is planned.

  1. Benjamin Huntsman melts steel in a clay pot

    Huntsman, a clockmaker working in Handsworth who could not get steel good enough for his springs, developed a crucible process that melted blister steel in a covered clay pot until it ran even.

    Why it mattered For the first time steel could be made to a consistent quality and cast. Sheffield could now sell a material nobody else could make, not just the skill to shape one.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: History of Sheffield, Wikipedia

  2. Thomas Boulsover invents Sheffield plate

    Boulsover found that a thin sheet of silver could be fused onto a copper ingot and the two rolled out together as one metal.

    Why it mattered Silverware at a price ordinary households could reach. It created an entire second trade in the town beside the knife makers, and a name, Sheffield plate, that outlived the process.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: History of Sheffield, Wikipedia

  3. Sheffield gets its own assay office

    The town was granted a silver assay office, with the authority to test and hallmark silver made here.

    Why it mattered Silverware no longer had to be carted to London and back to be marked. The city could finish its own work, and keep the margin.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: History of Sheffield, Wikipedia

  4. The little mesters

    As the trade grew more complex, cutlery firms rented workshops, benches and power to self-employed master craftsmen, each specialising in one stage, whether forging, grinding, hafting or finishing, and in one product, such as razors, penknives or surgical instruments. Mester is the Sheffield word for master.

    Why it mattered Sheffield's industry was never one big factory. It was thousands of small ones sharing a roof, which is why the city is full of yards and workshops and why its trade could change what it made almost overnight.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Little mester, Wikipedia

People born here in these years

From Wikidata, which holds the dates. Portraits link to their Wikimedia Commons file page, where the licence and the photographer are recorded.

See the era for yourself

Digitised books, maps and pictures published in these years, from the Internet Archive. Each item states its own rights on its page.

1830 to 1899 The Victorian city and what it cost

This is the century Sheffield becomes a city, and the century it pays for it. Cholera, a burst reservoir and a decade of violence inside its own trade unions all happen within forty years of each other, and each one ends in an inquiry. It is also the century the city starts building the institutions it still has: a borough council, a college that becomes a university, and, in a field at Highfield, the oldest football club in the world.

  1. Cholera kills 402 people

    An epidemic of cholera killed 402 people in Sheffield and infected around a thousand more.

    Why it mattered It showed how far the water and the housing had fallen behind a town that had been growing faster than anybody was managing it.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Cholera Monument, Wikipedia

  2. The Cholera Monument is completed

    A neo-Gothic pinnacle designed by M. E. Hadfield and sculpted by Earp and Hobbs, finished in 1835 on the hillside between Park Hill and Norfolk Park where 339 of the dead were buried. The poet James Montgomery laid the foundation stone. John Blake, the Master Cutler, is the only person named on it.

    Why it mattered A city built on trade chose to commemorate an epidemic that mostly killed the poor, and put the monument where everyone could see it. It is still standing, and the grounds are still open.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Cholera Monument, Wikipedia

  3. Sheffield is incorporated as a borough

    An Act of Incorporation made Sheffield a municipal borough with an elected council. Our two sources disagree on the year: Wikipedia's article on Sheffield says 1842 and its history of Sheffield says 1843, so treat the exact year as unsettled.

    Why it mattered The town got a government of its own for the first time, rather than being administered through the lord of the manor and the church.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Sheffield, Wikipedia

  4. Bramall Lane

    Football stadium.

    Dated in the open record rather than written here, so it stays current, and anybody can check or correct it at the source.

    From the open record Source: Wikidata

  5. Sheffield F.C., the oldest football club in the world

    Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest founded the club at an inaugural meeting at Parkfield House in Highfield. Their Sheffield Rules, agreed at the 1858 annual meeting and published the year after, were the first detailed rules of football published by a club rather than a school or a university. FIFA recognises Sheffield F.C. as the oldest independent club still playing.

    Why it mattered The written form of association football was argued out in several places at once, and one of them was here. The club is still going.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Sheffield F.C., Wikipedia

  6. The Great Sheffield Flood

    The Dale Dyke dam above Low Bradfield failed on the night of Friday 11 March 1864 and the reservoir came down the Loxley and the Don into the town. At least 240 people died, and more than 600 houses were damaged or destroyed. The figure is not settled: the same account gives both 240 and 238. The inquest put the failure down to ground movement under the embankment and found nobody at fault.

    Why it mattered A reservoir built to supply a fast-growing industrial town destroyed a large part of it in one night, and the inquiry that followed cleared the company that built it.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Great Sheffield Flood, Wikipedia

  7. The Sheffield Outrages

    A run of explosions, sabotage and, in at least one case, murder, carried out within the grinding and cutlery trades to enforce union membership and union rules. A special commission of inquiry sat in May 1867 and offered witnesses immunity. William Broadhead, secretary of the Saw Grinders' Union, admitted paying two men fifteen pounds to kill the employer James Linley.

    Why it mattered It produced one of the most detailed accounts of Victorian working life anybody had gathered, and it was conducted almost entirely as a hunt for crimes rather than for causes, a criticism made at the time, in the city, by Isaac Ironside.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Sheffield Outrages, Wikipedia

  8. Firth College opens

    Firth College opened in 1879, and in 1897 merged with the city's medical school and technical school to form University College of Sheffield.

    Why it mattered The first of the three institutions that became the University of Sheffield, founded while the city was still arguing about drains.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: University of Sheffield, Wikipedia

  9. Sheffield is granted city status

    City status was granted by letters patent in 1893.

    Why it mattered Formal recognition of what the century had already done: a manor with a knife trade had become one of the industrial centres of the country.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Sheffield, Wikipedia

  10. Hillsborough Stadium

    Stadium in Sheffield, England.

    Dated in the open record rather than written here, so it stays current, and anybody can check or correct it at the source.

    From the open record Source: Wikidata

People born here in these years

From Wikidata, which holds the dates. Portraits link to their Wikimedia Commons file page, where the licence and the photographer are recorded.

1900 to 1950 Stainless steel, and total war

A laboratory in Sheffield looking for a harder gun barrel finds a steel that does not rust, and changes every kitchen and hospital in the world. The same expertise makes the city a target: two nights of bombing in December 1940 kill more Sheffield people than any other event in its history. Between the two, walkers from the industrial cities start trespassing on the moors that the city looks out at, and win.

  1. The University of Sheffield gets its charter

    The university charter was sealed on 31 May 1905 and University College of Sheffield became the University of Sheffield.

    Why it mattered The city that made the steel now trained the people who studied it, which is how a works laboratory came to be doing original metallurgy eight years later.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: University of Sheffield, Wikipedia

  2. Harry Brearley casts a steel that will not rust

    Working at the Brown Firth laboratories on the problem of gun barrels wearing out, Brearley cast an alloy of roughly 12.8 per cent chromium and 0.24 per cent carbon and found that it resisted the acid he used to etch samples. The date is not agreed: 13 August 1913 is the usual one, the American Society for Metals dates casting number 1008 to 20 August 1913, and some accounts put the discovery in 1912.

    Why it mattered Stainless steel is now in every kitchen, hospital and chemical plant in the world. It came out of a Sheffield works laboratory that was looking for something else entirely.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Harry Brearley, Wikipedia

  3. Diocese of Sheffield

    Church of England diocese.

    Dated in the open record rather than written here, so it stays current, and anybody can check or correct it at the source.

    From the open record Source: Wikidata

  4. Orgreave Train Collision 1926

    Railway accident in the UK.

    Dated in the open record rather than written here, so it stays current, and anybody can check or correct it at the source.

    From the open record Source: Wikidata

  5. The mass trespass of Kinder Scout

    Walkers organised by Benny Rothman of the British Workers' Sports Federation deliberately trespassed onto private grouse moor. Six were arrested, five convicted, with sentences of two to six months. How many took part is genuinely unknown: contemporary reports say 100 or 400, the organisers said 600 to 800, and Ewan MacColl remembered over 3,000.

    Why it mattered It is the best known moment in the campaign for a right to roam, and the moorland it was about became part of the first national park in Britain nineteen years later.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Mass trespass of Kinder Scout, Wikipedia

  6. The Sheffield Blitz

    Two heavy raids three nights apart. On the 12th the alert sounded at 7pm, the pathfinders arrived at 7.41pm and the bombing went on until 4am. Over 660 people were killed, 1,500 injured and 40,000 made homeless; 3,000 homes were demolished and 78,000 damaged. The worst single moment was the Marples Hotel on Fitzalan Square, hit at 11.44pm, where 78 people sheltering in the cellar died.

    Why it mattered The city that made the steel for the war was always going to be a target. Nothing else in Sheffield's recorded history killed so many of its people, and the centre people walk through now was built over what those two nights cleared.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Sheffield Blitz, Wikipedia

  7. The Peak District becomes Britain's first national park

    The Peak District was designated on 17 April 1951 under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, the first national park in the United Kingdom.

    Why it mattered About a third of Sheffield lies inside it. An industrial city ended up with a national park inside its own boundary, which is why the buses out of town go to crags and reservoirs.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Peak District, Wikipedia

People born here in these years

From Wikidata, which holds the dates. Portraits link to their Wikimedia Commons file page, where the licence and the photographer are recorded.

1951 to 1995 Rebuilding, and the end of the steel age

Sheffield rebuilds itself with real ambition. Streets in the sky at Park Hill, a theatre in the round in the centre. Then, within a single decade, it loses the industry that paid for all of it. The 1980s in this city are a strike, a coking works, a stadium disaster and a shopping centre built on the ground where a steelworks stood. They are also cheap synthesisers, a record label above a shop, and a generation who wrote about all of it.

  1. Park Hill is built

    995 flats and maisonettes designed by Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith under the city architect J. L. Womersley, with deck access wide enough to walk along, on the hill above the station. It was listed Grade II* in 1998, at the time the largest listed building in Europe.

    Why it mattered The most ambitious attempt in Britain to rehouse people from back-to-back slums without breaking up the streets they already lived in. Whether it worked is still argued about in the city, loudly.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Park Hill, Sheffield, Wikipedia

  2. Drama Studio, University of Sheffield

    Theatre in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, UK.

    Dated in the open record rather than written here, so it stays current, and anybody can check or correct it at the source.

    From the open record Source: Wikidata

  3. The Crucible Theatre opens

    A 980-seat thrust stage designed by RHWL with Tanya Moiseiwitsch, in the tradition of Tyrone Guthrie's theatres, replacing the old Sheffield Repertory Theatre.

    Why it mattered A city that had lost its repertory theatre built one of the most admired producing houses in the country instead, with a stage the audience sits around rather than in front of.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Crucible Theatre, Wikipedia

  4. The World Snooker Championship comes to the Crucible

    The championship was first held at the Crucible in 1977 and has been played there every year since.

    Why it mattered A theatre built for drama turned out to be the right room for snooker, and the name of a Sheffield playhouse became the name of a world championship.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Crucible Theatre, Wikipedia

  5. The Human League

    Formed in Sheffield in 1977 by Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware on synthesisers with Philip Oakey singing. Their album Dare, released in October 1981, went to number one, and Don't You Want Me spent five weeks at number one over that Christmas and sold almost 1.5 million copies in the UK.

    Why it mattered Cheap synthesisers in a steel city produced a sound that went round the world, and set the pattern for the run of Sheffield bands that followed.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: The Human League, Wikipedia

  6. The national steel strike

    British Steel workers struck over pay from 2 January 1980, the first national steel strike since 1926. It lasted thirteen weeks, spread to the private sector, and ended on 3 April with a 16 per cent rise in exchange for productivity and working-practice changes.

    Why it mattered It opened the decade in which Sheffield's steel employment collapsed. The plants that stayed open after it were, in most cases, much smaller.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: 1980 in the United Kingdom, Wikipedia

  7. Orgreave

    During the miners' strike about 5,000 pickets and about 6,000 officers from eighteen police forces, with dogs and 42 mounted officers, met at the Orgreave coking works. 123 people were injured. Seventy-one pickets were charged with riot and 24 with violent disorder; the trials collapsed when police evidence was judged unreliable and every charge was dropped. In 1991 South Yorkshire Police paid £425,000 in compensation to 39 miners. No officer was disciplined.

    Why it mattered It is still the most disputed day in South Yorkshire's recent history, and the argument about what happened and who should answer for it has never been closed.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Battle of Orgreave, Wikipedia

  8. National Emergency Services Museum

    Museum in Sheffield, England.

    Dated in the open record rather than written here, so it stays current, and anybody can check or correct it at the source.

    From the open record Source: Wikidata

  9. The Hillsborough disaster

    A crush at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough killed 94 people on the day. The toll reached 97 with the deaths of Tony Bland in 1993 and Andrew Devine in 2021. In 2016 the inquests returned verdicts of unlawful killing and found that errors and omissions by the police, the club, the ambulance service and the stadium design caused or contributed to the deaths, and that the behaviour of supporters did not.

    Why it mattered It happened in this city, it changed British stadiums permanently, and it took twenty-seven years for the official record to be corrected.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Hillsborough disaster, Wikipedia

  10. Warp Records puts out its first single

    Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell, who worked at the FON record shop on Division Street, refitted it with the producer Robert Gordon as Warp Records. The first release, in 1989, was Track With No Name by Gordon's band Forgemasters, the same name as the city's steelworks.

    Why it mattered One of the most influential electronic labels in the world started in a record shop in the middle of Sheffield, in the same decade the works were closing.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Warp, Wikipedia

  11. Meadowhall opens on a steelworks site

    The shopping centre opened on 4 September 1990, built on the site of Hadfields' East Hecla steelworks, with a floor area of about 139,355 square metres.

    Why it mattered Nothing states what happened to the Lower Don Valley more plainly than a million and a half square feet of retail standing where Hadfields made steel.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Meadowhall Centre, Wikipedia

  12. FlyDSA Arena

    Arena in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England.

    Dated in the open record rather than written here, so it stays current, and anybody can check or correct it at the source.

    From the open record Source: Wikidata

  13. Sheffield Hallam University

    Sheffield City Polytechnic became Sheffield Hallam University with the right to award its own degrees. Its line runs back to the Sheffield School of Design, founded in 1843 after lobbying by the artist Benjamin Haydon.

    Why it mattered The city had two universities for the first time, a hundred and fifty years after the first of the institutions behind them opened its doors.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Sheffield Hallam University, Wikipedia

  14. The Supertram starts running

    The first section opened on 21 March 1994, running out to Meadowhall along a former heavy rail alignment. The network was completed in stages, with the last main section, Shalesmoor to Middlewood and Malin Bridge, opening on 23 October 1995.

    Why it mattered Trams came back to Sheffield streets after decades away, and the first line went to the shopping centre that had replaced the steelworks.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: South Yorkshire Supertram, Wikipedia

  15. Pulp release Different Class

    The album entered the UK chart at number one and won the 1996 Mercury Music Prize. Pulp had been going in Sheffield since 1978.

    Why it mattered A record about class, sex and where you go when you have no money, made by a band who had spent seventeen years in the city getting nowhere first.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Different Class, Wikipedia

People born here in these years

From Wikidata, which holds the dates. Portraits link to their Wikimedia Commons file page, where the licence and the photographer are recorded.

1996 to today The city since

What replaced the steelworks was not one thing. Two universities, a research centre for Boeing and Rolls-Royce on the field where the pickets stood at Orgreave, a glasshouse in the middle of town, a band from High Green with the fastest-selling debut album in British chart history, and the slow rebuilding of Park Hill in public, one block at a time. The arguments about what the city should be are not settled, which is roughly how it has always been here.

  1. The Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre opens at Orgreave

    The University of Sheffield founded the AMRC in 2001 with Boeing, on the reclaimed site of the former Orgreave coking works. Rolls-Royce, McLaren and others have since built on the same park.

    Why it mattered The ground where 5,000 pickets and 6,000 police met in 1984 is now where the region does its advanced manufacturing research. There is no neater illustration of what changed.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Russell Group: building a global advanced manufacturing hub in Sheffield

  2. The Winter Garden opens

    A glasshouse 70 metres long and 21 metres high, built of glued laminated larch by Pringle Richards Sharratt with Buro Happold as part of the Heart of the City scheme, holding more than 2,000 plants. It was opened by Elizabeth II.

    Why it mattered A temperate glasshouse in the middle of the city centre that anybody can walk through, for nothing, on the way to somewhere else.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Sheffield Winter Garden, Wikipedia

  3. Arctic Monkeys' debut album

    Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not sold 363,735 copies in its first UK week, more than the rest of the top twenty put together, and became the fastest-selling debut album in British chart history.

    Why it mattered The songs are about taxi ranks, nightclub queues and High Green, and the record they were on broke a national chart record. The city had been writing about itself for thirty years by then.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, Wikipedia

  4. Park Hill is rebuilt in public

    Urban Splash began regenerating the listed estate in 2006, in five phases, and the work is still going on.

    Why it mattered The argument about whether Park Hill should have been saved has been running since the 1998 listing, and the answer is being built one block at a time where everybody can see it.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: Park Hill, Sheffield, Wikipedia

  5. Wheel of Sheffield

    Ferris wheel in Sheffield, England.

    Dated in the open record rather than written here, so it stays current, and anybody can check or correct it at the source.

    From the open record Source: Wikidata

  6. Sheffield Student Housing Co-operative

    Student housing co-operative in Sheffield, England.

    Dated in the open record rather than written here, so it stays current, and anybody can check or correct it at the source.

    From the open record Source: Wikidata

  7. The Supertram returns to public ownership

    Operation transferred from Stagecoach to South Yorkshire Future Trams Limited on 22 March 2024, thirty years after the first tram ran.

    Why it mattered The network went back into public hands almost exactly three decades after it opened, which is the sort of full circle this city specialises in.

    Written here, checked against a source Source: South Yorkshire Supertram, Wikipedia

People born here in these years

From Wikidata, which holds the dates. Portraits link to their Wikimedia Commons file page, where the licence and the photographer are recorded.

Where this comes from

The written entries each link the source they were checked against. The dated entries, the people and the archive items are read from stored snapshots of Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons and the Internet Archive. Wikidata is CC0 and Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Portraits come from Wikimedia Commons and each one links to its own file page, which carries its licence and its photographer. Internet Archive items carry the rights stated on their own pages.

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