The Commons of the Ancient Parish of Sheffield

Abstract

The enormous parish of Sheffield covered 22,370 acres and was divided into six civil townships, each with their own commons and wastes. Farming systems varied considerably between the townships. The day-to-day decisions on farming practices were sometimes taken by smaller units of administration known as hamlets. The first tasks for agricultural and landscape historians are therefore to define boundaries and to understand the complex local arrangements of the communal townfields, greens, commons and wastes. These are explored in detail from the medieval period up to parliamentary enclosure in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As the town of Sheffield spread, the former commons and greens were built upon, but the moorland edges were enclosed within new, rectangular fields and the extensive wastes beyond became exclusive grouse moors.