The settlements that grew and merged to form Sheffield date from the second half of the first millennium, and are of Anglo-Saxon and Danish origin. In Anglo-Saxon times, the Sheffield area straddled the border between the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. After the Norman conquest, Sheffield Castle was built to protect the local settlements, and a small town developed that is the nucleus of the modern city.

By 1296, a market had been established at what is now known as Castle Square. Sheffield is of course famous for cutlery, and in the 14th century, it was already noted for the production of knives (as mentioned in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales), and by the early 1600s it had become the main centre of cutlery manufacture in England outside of London, overseen by the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire.

During the 1740s, a form of the crucible steel process was discovered that allowed the manufacture of a better quality of steel than had previously been possible. In the same period, a technique was developed for fusing a thin sheet of silver onto a copper ingot to produce silver plating, which became widely known as Sheffield plate.

These innovations spurred Sheffield’s growth as an industrial town, but the loss of some important export markets led to a recession in the late 18th and early 19th century. The resulting poor conditions culminated in a cholera epidemic that killed 402 people in 1832.

Data provided exclusively to the Periodical by www.thegenealogist.co.uk, extracted from the site’s census collections, shows the importance of industry to the city in the 19th century. In 1841, many of the main trades reflect the cutlery industry: cutler, grinder, file smith. These have gone by 1911, but coal mining has grown fourfold as an occupation; many carters are also listed, along with increased numbers of domestic servants. The population of the town grew rapidly throughout the 19th century; increasing from 60,095 in 1801 to 451,195 by 1901. The town was granted a city charter in 1893.

TheGenealogist’s data team has also analysed census records for the 20 most common surnames in the county. Those that stand out from the rest of the country, appearing in lists for both 1841 and 1901, include Turner, Ward, Jackson, Thompson and Shaw; also prominent in 1841 were Barker, Lee, Hobson and Marshall; and Harrison and Cooper in 1901.

The influx of people also led to demand for better water supplies. The collapse of the wall of a new reservoir in 1864 resulted in the Great Sheffield Flood, which killed 270 people and devastated large parts of the town –see here for a new online resource on this. The growing population also led to the construction of many back-to-back dwellings.

A recession in the 1930s was halted by Sheffield’s steel factories being set to work manufacturing weapons and ammunition for the war effort. As a result, the city became a target for bombing raids, the heaviest of which occurred on the nights of 12 and 15 December 1940, now known as the Sheffield Blitz. Since WW2, increased automation and competition from abroad have resulted in the closure of many steel mills.

See Sheffield Archives. They also maintain an online image archive atwww.picturesheffield.com. For local museums see www.museums-sheffield.org.ukandwww.simt.co.uk .