Geography 497: International Field Study, Summer 2003 Field Trip
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Geography 497: International Field Study, Summer 2003 Field Trip Summary SUNDAY June 22: 7.00 p.m. Dinner, Halifax Hall, Sheffield University. Final pre-trip preparations are discussed in a local pub, conveniently located within 10 minutes walk. MONDAY, June 23: 7.30 a.m. Breakfast. 9.15 a.m. We begin by walking towards Endcliffe Park and Whiteley Woods where Shepherd Wheel is located. On the way, we pass some Victorian housing and at the junction of Ecclesall Road, Hunter’s Bar, now covered by trees, is the site of a former toll gate (really toll house). Hunter’s Bar was erected around 1700 as part of a turnpike trust to charge road users for the upkeep of the road. There were 10 turnpike trusts controlling 16 toll gates in Sheffield. Hunter’s Bar was the last to close in 1884. Photo 1: Geography 497 in Endcliffe Park. Parks for recreational purposes are a long established, widespread feature of the Sheffield landscape found throughout the city (outside of the central area). Part of the Sheffield web-based promotional literature claims the city is one of the greenest in Europe, including 78 public parks, 10 gardens and 170 woodlands. Many of the parks are large. Photo 2: Shepherd Wheel 9.52 a.m. Shepherd Wheel is on the Porter River, Whiteley Woods. The site comprises cutlery grinding and polishing operations and a water wheel. The latter which provided power for grinding stones (made out of local sandstone) was driven by a dam created by diverting water from the Porter River. In Sheffield, water channels that diverted water from (and back to) rivers are called ‘goits’. The site was built in the early 1500s and operated until the 1930s. Shepherd’s wheel is now part of Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust and is only opened by prior arrangement. Cutlery grinding occurred in the building at the top of the picture; the waterwheel and dam is behind this building while the lower building was used for polishing, or ‘buffing’ as it was known in Sheffield. (As the industry developed buffing became primarily a woman’s job done by the ‘buffer girls’). Note that these buildings operated initially operated as a ‘proto-workshop’ and subsequently as a factory. Initially, independent ‘jobbing’ grinders rented a grinding trough (wheel) and worked for their own customers; they probably lived and worked primarily down stream nearer to the centre of Sheffield. In 1784, Mr. Shepherd acquired the buildings and paid workers, almost certainly on a piece- work basis, to grind for his customers. Photo 3: River Porter Sheffield is a city of hills undulating often quite steeply from the valleys of rivers, notably the Sheaf, Porter, Loxley and Rivelin, as well as the (relatively) more imposing River Don. The cutlery industry began to develop during the early medieval period and until the Industrial Revolution, cutlery was basically dispersed along these rivers, better thought of as steams, around numerous (about 150) water wheels. This concentration of water power was a distinctive feature of Sheffield prior to the Industrial Revolution. As you might imagine, variability of water flow to the water wheels was a problem ‘in the old days’ and cooperation among water wheel owners was required from time to time. 11.00 a.m. Our rented bus arrives and we drive to ‘up and over’ to the next valley of the River Sheaf. Photo 4: Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, River Sheaf This museum recreates cutlery and early crucible steel making processes that were vital to Sheffield’s industrialization. Originally powered by a water wheel, iron working at Abbeydale has been dated prior to 1200. In the 18th century, the site became a scythe-making works and used the new crucible steel making process invented by Benjamin Huntsman, a clock maker originally based in nearby Doncaster, in the 1740s and 1750s. The crucibles weighed around 60- 80lbs and crucible steel making required great strength and intimate knowledge – the skills of Sheffield workers proved very difficult to copy! Crucible steel established the foundations of the modern steel industry and the reputation of Sheffield as a global steel city, noted especially for its high quality steels. Crucible steel was the first time ‘cast’ steel had been made and was a higher quality than the prevailing blister steel that was made in cementation furnaces. Crucible steel, which used blister steel as an input, was made in small pots or crucibles and provided the basis for all ingot steel making processes. In 1840 Sheffield was the world’s leading producer of steel (and cutlery) and at in the late 19th century there were over 14,000 crucibles in Sheffield, by then threatened by more efficient processes. In the photo, the crucible furnaces were in the buildings with the tall, square chimneys. Noon: Lunch at the museum café. Although late July, the museum café was closed – in fact, apart from us there were no other visitors. Perhaps the supply of heritage sites outweighs the demand? Happily, our café was opened just for us to offer some British classics, including the ‘chip butty’ (french fries in a sandwich). Yum Yum. 1.05 p.m. Victoria Quay and the head of the Sheffield Canal Basin. Victoria Quay is part of Sheffield’s rejuvenation attempts and features new office space, a hotel, residences around a newly landscaped canal basin head. Photo 5: Seminar at the Sheffield Canal Jacquie Nelson gives the first seminar, delivered with much enthusiasm, insight and supported by an impressive array of ‘visuals, at the head of the Sheffield canal. This canal was built in the 1820s, a project delayed for years by opposition from the Duke of Norfolk, then as now Sheffield’s biggest landowner. The Duke felt his own industrial interests would be undermined by undermined by the Canal. When it was built the canal provided vital connections (via the Humber estuary and the North Sea) to international resources and markets. Photo 6: The Sheffield Canal. The opening shots of the Full Monte were a little down stream from here. The canal, which flows parallel to the River Don, is now part of an extensive national network that is used increasingly for recreational purposes. We noted that the landscaping around the head of the Canal Basin has petered out at this location, and the canal walk linking Sheffield centre and the new Meadow Hall shopping area is used mainly by a few fisherman who can now be found on the banks of the canal. This canal walk meets a another walkway along the River Don to permit a circular walk from Sheffield city centre to and from Meadowhall shopping centre. The recreational potential of this walk way (‘Five Weir Walk’) was given a boost by the Full Monte but its potential remains to be properly developed. 3.30 p.m. Wincobank Hill, site of an iron age fort that provides a commanding position and good view of Sheffield from the north-east part of the city, especially the lower Don Valley which was the core of Sheffield’s steel district. Photo 7: Sam Wong, Wincobank Hill in full song presenting seminar two On this historic spot Sam Wong provided us with an impressive overview of the deindustrialization of Sheffield and noted the extraordinary changes in the landscape of the lower Don within the past two decades. Where once steel works dominated now we see services of all kinds, notably by a giant shopping centre (Meadowhall), an ice arena, sports stadium and concert theatre. Wincobank Hill, in an unfashionable part of the city, is a rather unkempt, neglected site that comprises a double rampart and an earth bank constructed over a stone wall that has been radio-carbon dated to 500 BC. In AD 54, from this site the local Brigantes stared across the Don valley at the Romans in their fort at Templeborough, that is until AD 69 when the Romans advanced. The Don (or Dun as it was called until the 18th century, is a pre-Celtic name and “is thought to have marked the boundary between the British tribes, the Brigantes and the Corieltauvi” (Hey 1998: 5). Then the Romans came and left, and the locals became part of the Kingdom of Elmet. But in 617 Elmet was defeated by Anglo-Saxons from Northumberland and this area formed the southern boundary of the (northern) Kingdom of Northumbria with the kingdom of Mercia to the south. Interestingly, to this day, the ‘true’ northerners from Northumberland and Durham still regard Sheffield as part of the midlands while southerners see Sheffield as part of the ‘grim’ north. For their part, Sheffielders see themselves as northerners in the county of Yorkshire. Photo 8: The Lower Don Valley from Wincobank Hill The lower Don became one of the world’s great industrial districts in the mid-19th century and this industrial character remained until the great Depression of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Since then, most of the steel mills have not only been closed but demolished and replaced. (You can still see a few). 3.50 p.m. Shiregreen housing estate, a publicly owned (social housing) estate built in the 1930s for working class people (and my birthplace). These estates were a major effort to improve the living conditions of working class people living in extremely cramped quarters in highly congested buildings near to down town. Council houses had large gardens, in-door toilets, a bathroom, two or three bedrooms and were either typically part of a ‘two-block’ or a four-block’. These redbrick houses were similar in style and construction but varied a little by size.