The explosive growth of the settlements in the area that became the City of Sheffield in was a product of the industrial revolution. However, the area has been occupied since at least the last ice age and the settlements that grew to form Sheffield date from Anglo-Saxon times. After the Norman conquest Sheffield Castle was built in to control the Saxon settlements and a small town developed that is the nucleus of the modern city.

By the 14th century Sheffield was noted for the production of knives and by 1600 it had become the main centre of cutlery production in England, overseen by The Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire. In the 1740s a form of the crucible steel process for making a better quality of steel than had previously been available was discovered, and at about the same time a technique for fusing a thin sheet on silver onto a copper ingot to produce silver plating was invented. The associated industries lead to the rapid growth of Sheffield during the industrial revolution. The town was incorporated as a Borough in 1842 and granted city status in 1893.

This page was last updated: 12 November 2008

Town history extracts are taken from Wikipedia and are licensed under GFDL