Sheffield Castle - Talbot (Earls of Shrewsbury)

Thirty years after his marriage to Maud, John Talbot was created the first Earl of Shrewsbury, having distinguished himself in the wars of Henry VI.

In 1453 he died in battle at Chatillcon in France. It is said that his tenants fought so valiantly around their dying Lord that there was not a house in Hallamshire that did not lose a man.

His son John only seven years later in the Wars of the Roses. Despite such dramatic events occurring elsewhere, domestic life continued as normal in Sheffield. Account rolls of Sheffield Manor for the 15th century record repairs undertaken within the castle to the stables, chapel, kitchen, the great hall and the "great gate", new plumbing and leadwork to the roof of the great tower and to the tower next to the bakehouse. Many of these service buildings are thought to have been in the area known later as Castle Folds.

Extracts from records dated 1479-80 indicated payments:

"To William Swift for food when carting 20 loads of lime kiln from Roche Wood to the castle for constructing a causeway to the castle walls, for food and for other necessities - 6s"

Another payment, to John Cawode, was for "plumbing on the aqueduct", which suggests that this was the method used to bring water to the castle.

The son and heir of the third John Talbot was George, the fourth Earl of Shrewsbury. He was responsible for the construction of Sheffield Manor House, begun in 1516 on the site of an earlier hunting lodge, approximately one mile south east of the castle. This soon became the family home in preference to the castle.

In 1530 Cardinal Wolsey was brought to the Manor House as a guest of the fourth Earl. He was on his way to London to stand trial for high treason before Henry VIII. Wolsey stayed at the Manor for 18 days "And once everie daye my Lorde of Shrewsbury would repair unto him and commune with him, sittinge upon a bench in a great windowe in the gallerey". By now frail and ill, Wolsey died two weeks later at Leicester Abbey without reaching London.

George, the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, is probably the best remembered of the Earls of Shrewsbury as the unwilling gaoler of Mary Queen of Scots. His second wife is better known as Bess of Hardwick.

Sheffield Markets History