Catalogue description ARCHIVES OF THE SHEFFIELD TOWN TRUSTEES

Fee farm charter of 1297

Minute books, 1709-1984

Law Clerk's rough minutes, 1848-1908

Accounts and cash books, 1566-1949

Ledgers, 1889-1939

Survey and rentals, 1780-1945

Registers of assignments of leases, 1787-1970

Botanical Gardens Committee, 1898-1933

Daniel Holy's Charity, [1869]-1951

Street Improvement plans and books of reference, 1845 and 1873-4

Deeds and some miscellaneous papers, 1617-1965

See also list of MD 4056-4078 & LD 1679

Town Trustees, Sheffield

Access restrictions may apply to some of the modern records. Please enquire for details.

Deposited 1977 - accession no. 1977/72

The four-digit numbers commencing with '4' in round brackets are the original Town Trustees' list numbers for the documents. They are now obsolete.

The earliest accounts and the minutes to 1955 have been edited in toto or extracted:

J. D. Leader, Extracts from the Earliest Book of Accounts belonging to the Town Trustees of Sheffield, ... 1566 to 1707, (1879);

idem, The Records of the Burgery of Sheffield, (1897) [1566-1848];

E. Bramley, A Record of the Burgery of Sheffield ... from 1848 to 1955, (1957).

• Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire
• Sheffield, South Yorkshire
• Urban development

In 1297, Thomas de Furnival created a seignorial borough of Sheffield, by granting the feefarm to the burgesses of Sheffield. In effect, this is the formal commencement of the Burgery of Sheffield, the predecessors of the Town Trustees. Originally, the Burgery combined the functions later exercised by both the Church Burgesses and the Town Trustees. On the dissolution of the chantries, the property deemed to have been endowed for spiritual purposes was confiscated, and the residual property entrusted to the Town Trustees for secular purposes. The Marian restoration of property to Church Burgesses for ecclesiastical purposes in 1554 brought the final separation of Church Burgesses and Town Trustees. The charters of the old Burgery before 1554 have thus all become the property of the Church Burgesses, with the exception of the feefarm charter of 1297. The early charters and deeds before 1554 were catalogued by T. W. Hall, A Catalogue of the Ancient Charters belonging to the Twelve Capital Burgesses ..(1913), and these, with all the other records of the Church Burgesses, were deposited at Sheffield Archives in 1976.

The Town Trustees consequently acted on behalf of the commonalty of Sheffield as the administration of the township for secular purposes, although some of these functions were also exercised by the manorial court. The Trustees were largely supplanted in this in 1843 when Sheffield was incorporated. The Trustees continued to implement street improvements under private Act of Parliament.

The records of the Trustees commence with the first account book in 1566.

The property of the Trustees was largely concentrated in the centre of Sheffield township, with outlying property in Fulwood and Upper Hallam. As with the deeds of the Church Burgesses' estates and the registers of building leases of the Duke of Norfolk, the deeds of the Trustees throw further light on the topographical and spatial development of Sheffield. They confirm the picture of infilling of the centre of the Township in the 1780's and 1790's, prior to the outward expansion. Similarly, they shed light on the building process, the builders and the building financiers. Of particular interest are the building leases granted by the Rev. James Wilkinson, vicar of Sheffield, when Vicarage Croft was developed in 1787. The leasehold premises later passed to the Trustees.

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