A year in archives: collection highlights from 2016

Each year the document collection at Sheffield City Archives grows in size.  Last year we received around 900 boxes of archival material dating from the 16^th century to the present day including legal documents, photographs, architectural plans, glass negatives, ancient deeds, watercolour paintings and digital files.  Each item reveals a bit more to us about Sheffield’s history.  What follows is a brief look at some of the collection highlights from 2016...

Two volumes were donated by a private individual relating to Hadfields Limited (National Projectile Factory), Sheffield detailing orders for high explosive shells during World War One.  The orders came from the Ministry of Munitions, the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, the Secretary of State for War, the Office of the Chief of Ordnance, War Department, Washington DC, USA and the United States Government, Navy Department.  Almost all of the orders recorded in the two ledgers were made at the Hecla Works, the smaller of Hadfields’ two sites.  To give an idea of the volume of goods produced, the monthly peak in March 1916 (three months before the Battle of the Somme) was around £437,000 worth of orders - quite an extraordinary sum. (Sheffield City Archives: X752/1).

Sheffield City Council has historically owned various plots of land and buildings across the city, the deeds to which have been stored in The Deeds Registry in the basement of Sheffield Town Hall, Pinstone Street.  In 2015, the Council began the process of voluntarily registering its ownership of land and property with the Land Registry.  Packages of unregistered deeds and documents were sent to the Land Registry for them to check the chain of ownership and prepare for a first registration.  Upon their return, the old prior deeds were no longer required as legal documents and were passed to Sheffield City Archives.  In 2016, we received over 100 boxes of these old title deeds, many dating back to the 1600s.  They cover ancient highways and byways, pubs and beerhouses, steam grinding wheels, cutlery works, music halls, dwellinghouses and more.  The oldest deed received so far dates from 1571 and describes ‘tenements on Snigg Hill leading from the Irish Cross to the West Barr’.  We expect hundreds more boxes to be transferred over the next few years. (Sheffield City Archives: CA778).

 A curious illuminated manuscript was donated to the Archives in November 2016.  It was an address, dated 1896, presented to James Melling of Throstle Grove, Pitsmoor by the Committee of the Sheffield Social Questions League, thanking Melling for the action he took against the landlord of the Black Swan Hotel, Snig Hill  and his 'brave stand...taken against the glaring public evils of our time - the forces of drink, gambling and impurity...'  It transpired that James Wallace, the landlord of the Black Swan, had published two letters in the Sheffield Independent falsely accusing Melling of trying to entrap him into selling alcohol after hours in breach of the licensing laws.  The case went to court and the judge ruled in favour of Melling.  The illuminated address praises Melling’s commitment to the promotion of temperance and social morality. (Sheffield City Archives: X748/1).

Upon their move from Meersbrook House last year, the Parks Department transferred a large quantity of records to the archives for permanent preservation including minutes, early staff wage books, allotment plans and photographs.  The records add much to our knowledge of the development of Sheffield’s parks and green spaces.  Of particular interest is a volume of coloured linen plans of parks, recreation grounds and open spaces drawn up by Mr E. Partington, Estates Surveyor in the 1920s.  The volume was obviously a working document for the Parks Department during the Second World War and many of the plans are annotated to denote ARP shelters, ARP posts, rest centres/shelters, barrage balloon sites, wartime allotments, ARP trenches, water tanks and fire tanks, open cast coal and huts for the Home Guard. (Sheffield City Archives: CA981).

We also received a donation of First World War letters written by Able Seaman Joe Rhodes of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserves to his sweetheart in Sheffield, Nellie Drabble.  Joe was born in Sheffield in 1900.  He became a crucible furnaceman, later serving in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves during the First World War, enlisting towards the end of December 1917 and starting his naval training in January 1918 at the Royal Navy training depot in Crystal Palace, London. Throughout his naval service, Rhodes kept up regular correspondence with his sweetheart back home in Sheffield, Nellie Drabble (1898 - 1968).  His letters discuss his training at the Royal Navy depot: ‘…the palace is a magnificent place and I am very sorry to say that our superiors are rotters...', thoughts of Sheffield: '...by the papers I see that the Zepps were knocking about Yorkshire last and I hope they did not make it uncomfortable for you just the same as when they pay us a visit...' and his enduring relationship with Nellie: '...We managed to get out last night for the first time and I had not been out 10 minutes before a girl came up to me and asked me take her a stroll, this I flatly refused by saying that the girl I left in Sheffield has all the love I can give and that I had none to spare for her...’  Joe Rhodes married Nellie Drabble on 25 February 1922 at St Mary's Church, Bramall Lane, Sheffield. (Sheffield City Archives: X747).

We also took in public records from Sheffield Magistrates’ Court, HM Coroner, the Northern General Hospital, Jessop Hospital for Women and Trent Regional Health Authority. Records were also deposited by Sheffield City Council, the Diocese of Sheffield, the GMB and NALGO trade unions, local businesses, societies and organisations and private individuals.

A full list of archives received by Sheffield City Archives (and other archives around the country) is published by The National Archives each year:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/accessions/

You can also search Sheffield City Archives' online catalogue here: http://www.calmview.eu/SheffieldArchives/CalmView/Default.aspx?

Review: Up, down, all-around stitch dictionary by Wendy Bernard

This is a fantastic reference for knitters wanting inspiration for their projects. Each stitch pattern is presented in written and charted form, and there are options for flat and circular knitting, depending on your preference or what the pattern calls for.

As if that wasn't enough, the patterns are also offered top-down and bottom-up where appropriate. Never again will you be put off using a heart motif on that top-down yoked sweater, and you can create leaves to your heart's content on that toe-up sock pattern you had your eye on.

Even if you don't have a particular pattern in mind, this is a great resource to browse through.

(There are also a range of craft groups and activities which take place in Sheffield Libraries. Please see the Sheffield Libraries events page for further details.)

If you like the sound of this, you might also like:

Exploring the archives: the mystery of the marble bust

Of the many hundreds of enquiries we received at Sheffield Archives and Local Studies Library last month, the mystery of the marble bust was perhaps one of the most intriguing. 

A Dutch antiques and fine art dealer, based in Eindhoven, got in touch to ask if we might be able to identify the subject of a marble bust that had turned up in the Netherlands.  The only clue the inquirer had about the bust was an engraving on its base which revealed how it was made by the Sheffield sculptor William Ellis (c.1824 - 1882). The individual depicted in the sculpture however was unknown.



Bust of the mystery Victorian gentleman which surfaced in Eindhoven, Netherlands



A search through the old newspapers at the Local Studies Library revealed an obituary for William Ellis, reported the day after his death in the Sheffield Independent newspaper on 20 July 1882 which details the various commissions Ellis worked on during his career. These included busts of notable nineteenth-century individuals associated with Sheffield such as Samuel Plimsoll M.P. (1823 - 1898), Henry Unwin J.P. (c. 1811 - 1879), the sculptor Alfred G. Stevens (1817 - 1875) (all exhibited 1876), the Rev. Samuel Earnshaw (1805 - 1888) (exhibited 1877) and the scientist Dr Henry Clifton Sorby (1826 - 1908) (exhibited 1879). One of Ellis’ last commissions was a bust of John Arthur Roebuck, M.P. (1801 - 1879). By cross-referencing pictures of these individuals on Picture Sheffield (www.picturesheffield.com) with the picture of the bust in the Dutch antiques centre, one-by-one, we were able to eliminate the candidates in this rather distinguished line-up of Victorian gentlemen until the identity of the individual was revealed. The bust bore an undeniably clear resemblance to John Arthur Roebuck.

Roebuck was born in India to an English civil servant father, raised in Canada, and qualified as a barrister. He served as radical Liberal MP for Sheffield in two spells between 1849 - 1868 and 1874 - 1879 (up until his death). In parliament, Roebuck was nicknamed “Dog Tear 'Em” due to his terrier instincts, his tenacity and his fierce opposition to notions of aristocracy and privilege.



Picture of John Arthur Roebuck (1801 - 1879), Liberal MP for Sheffield

(Sheffield Archives and Picture Sheffield Library: s08216)



Roebuck’s life was one of relative affluence. By contrast, the man who memorialised him in marble, William Ellis, spent most of his life battling destitution and hardship. Despite his talent as a sculptor, Ellis’ obituary reveals how between commissions ‘his existence has been a perpetual struggle with poverty…a struggle with an empty purse, and an empty cupboard’. A graduate of the Sheffield School of Art, Ellis assisted his friend and mentor Alfred Stevens (1817 - 1875) in the original winning design for the ‘Wellington Monument’, an undertaking which saw the two sculptors forced to endure ‘a wearying harassing life’ in London, subsisting ‘on the most part on bread and coffee during their stay in the metropolis’. Stevens himself died in poverty before the final Wellington monument (now housed in St Paul's Cathedral) was completed.  During the severe winter of 1880-81 Ellis’ obituary observes how Ellis ‘was frequently on the verge of starvation. Yet he never complained, and bore the biting cold and bitter misery of a fireless home with heroic fortitude’.   Ellis died practically penniless at his home at 26 Reliance Place, Winter Street, Sheffield on 19 July 1882.

Roebuck’s bust may have gone from Sheffield, but thanks to the documentary evidence at Sheffield Archives and Local Studies Library its identity, and the story of its creator, will always be remembered.