Uncovering 500 years of local history
Professor Dawn Hadley, of the University's Department of Archaeology, is working in partnership with the social enterprise Green Estate Ltd. to bring Sheffield Manor Lodge, a site of huge historical interest, to a wider audience.
Sheffield Manor Lodge is the site of a hunting lodge built between the late 15th and mid 16th centuries as a country retreat for the Earls of Shrewsbury, then the Lords of the Manor of Sheffield. At the time of its construction it was surrounded by a huge deer park, and it is perhaps best known as the place where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned for much of her 19 years in captivity, before her execution in 1587. The remains of the Sheffield Manor Lodge include parts of the kitchens, long gallery and the Grade II listed Turret House which dates from 1574 and contains fine 16th-century ceilings. The nearby 'Manor' housing estate is named after the site.
In 2004, the building featured on the BBC TV programme Restoration and was the subject of a National Lottery funding bid to convert it to a Heritage Centre. Green Estate Ltd, a social enterprise which manages the site, subsequently received £1.25million from the Heritage Lottery Fund to restore the scheduled ancient monument, develop the site for visitors and to tell its fascinating story in a new visitor centre, called the Sheffield Manor Lodge Discovery Centre.
Since 2004, Green Estate and the University of Sheffield have been working on the Manor Lodge site as a means of rebuilding the relationship between land and people. The ultimate aim is to make the Manor Lodge site as attractive and successful as other popular historical attractions, such as Chatsworth House.
Professor Hadley recently took over as head of the Sheffield archaeological team excavating the site. Dawn is working with Green Estate to disseminate the results of archaeological investigations at the site to a number of key stakeholders, including local schools, university students and the wider community. The site is a key educational resource, with local schools benefitting from annual field trips. The wider community can also access and learn about the history of the site through the visitor centre which opened in the summer of 2009, and which includes interactive computer databases to explore the artefacts, people and activity associated with the site and a community archive room equipped with a resource library of site-related books and texts. Dr Hadley is currently working to populate the centre's gallery spaces with information about the artefacts on loan from the Sheffield Museum and with displays based on the findings of the University's excavations.
A raft of future initiatives are planned, including events to bring the site´s past to life for the local community, as ProfessorHadley explains: "After the lodge fell into ruin, the site was reclaimed in the 18th and 19th centuries by artisans and craftspeople, who established a pottery kiln and a coal mine there and built workers' cottages amidst the ruins of the Lodge. The traces of these early industrial ventures were stripped away by the Dukes of Norfolk in the early 20th century, returning the site to its Tudor origins. However, despite this emphasis on what was perceived as the heyday of the site it was subsequently subsumed within the major social housing development to provide homes for Sheffield´s working classes in the 1930s".
To reflect this neglected industrial aspect of the site's history, an iron smelting demonstration is planned for summer 2010, along with other similar 'taster' experiences aimed at engaging local people. Local people can also appreciate the rich history of the site thanks to 3D computer reconstructions of how the manor would have looked in its Tudor heyday and during its later industrial phases.
For more information, please contact Professor Dawn Hadley:
email : D.M.Hadley@Sheffield.ac.uk