Sheffield Castle - Demolition

With the defeat of Charles I, the Parliamentarians were determined that strongholds which had been garrisoned by Royalist troops would not be used in the same was again.

W. Fairbanks' Plan of Castle Hill 1785: Sheffield Archives

On 30th April 1646 a resolution was passed by the House of Commons that Sheffield Castle should be made untenable. A further resolution was passed on 13th July 1647 for the Castle to be "sleighted and demolished". The order was carried out in 1648, with the stone and various effects being sold to local people for building material.

In 1764 the Rev. Edward Goodwin of Attercliffe stated in an article for "Gentleman's Magazine" that no visible traces of the castle existed, apart from street names including Castle Hill, Castle Folds, Castle Green and Castle Lathes.

A plan of Castle Hill in 1785 and other surviving surveys show the adjacent tenements and the main site mainly occupied by a bowling green, public houses, old shops, cottages, slaughter houses and iron furnaces. "The Sheffield Local Register" quotes that earlier in the century;

Existing Ruins showing sandstone outcrop base - Sheffield Markets

"The inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood were less distinguished by the elegance and refinement of social life, than by their feelings of independence and rigid honesty, by hospitality and crude and boisterous conviviality.

There are no assemblies, no theatre, and the principal amusements of the place were the sports at the castle bowling green, and social meeting at the taverns".

Sheffield Markets History