On the Border

This fortnight we’re revisiting an exhibition held at the Central Library a couple of years ago.  In it, we considered how Sheffield’s rich history had been shaped by conflict and major events in the wider world.  It is difficult to predict how our city may be changed by the current world crises of pandemic and climate emergency, but as history clearly shows, change will inevitably come…

In this series of blog posts we will pick out a selection of stories from our city’s past and hopefully whet your appetite for more.  You can delve deeper by visiting our website and view thousands of images at Picture Sheffield, the city’s depository of over 100,000 local images.  

On the border?

How do we define the Sheffield identity?  

Although proudly part of Yorkshire, much of the land that today falls within the city boundary was historically part of Derbyshire, and despite relative close proximity to other Yorkshire towns, the distance and difference between Sheffield and Leeds, or even Barnsley, can feel considerable.  For those living on the city’s western edge, the clarion call of the Peak District hills is loud and for many incomers the closeness of the green and purple moors is often what attracted them here in the first place.  

It is also often said that an invisible line exists across the city; not seen as a physical barrier, yet starkly apparent in measures such as life expectancy, ethnicity, and relative wealth.  

In fact, the Sheffield area has always lain upon a border.  Where today the city boundary sits on the county line between South Yorkshire and Derbyshire, in Anglo-Saxon times the ancient kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria abutted against one other.

A section of the Map of the West Riding of Yorkshire by W and J Blaeu (1645), showing Sheffield's position beside the border (shown in pink) with Derbyshire.

A meeting of kings

Anglo- Saxon England was made up of numerous kingdoms with the balance of power often shifting; particularly between the realms of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria.  Around 829, the pendulum had swung to the south and King Egbert of Wessex led his army north with a view to conquer land under the control of the Northumbrian King, Eanrad.  

The two mighty armies met at Dore, literally a gateway between two kingdoms, yet no battle actually took place.  King Eanrad surrendered and while retaining his kingdom agreed that Egbert would become ‘Bretwalda’, overlord of all England.

Nearby Blacka Moor and the unveiling of the plaque commemorating the meeting at Dore of two rival kings

The view from Wincobank

Centuries earlier, the ancient British kingdom of the Brigantes extended over much of what is now Yorkshire and the North down to the Sheffield area, with the hillfort at Wincobank perhaps being a southern outpost.

Following the arrival of the Romans in the south, a peace seems to have existed between the two groups, however this was not to last.  As the first and second centuries AD progressed, the Romans exerted their dominance further north, eventually conquering far into what is now Scotland and sweeping away Brigantes rule.

The hillfort at Wincobank remains shrouded in mystery.  With its commanding position above the River Don, for centuries it must have played an important role in the life of those living nearby.  Did it see battle, was it the centre of local administration, and for how long and by whom was it occupied?  Perhaps we can never know.

A view of Winkobank Hill, 1791  

Tomorrow we continue our journey by exploring the rise of Sheffield Castle and the key figures in Sheffield’s early growth in the centuries following the Norman conquest.