A Romantic Ruin
After Edward, the 8th Earl of Shrewsbury died in 1617 and the manor passed to the Howard family, the building’s heyday was past and it became increasingly neglected.
The Dukes of Norfolk
George the 6th Earl of Shrewsbury died in 1590 and was succeeded by his son Gilbert, who failed to reach the high offices of state that his father had held. He died in 1616 and his brother, Edward, died within a year, childless. The manor passed to Gilbert’s daughter, Alethia, who was married to Henry Howard, the Earl of Arundel and Surrey. The new lord and his lady lived at Arundel Castle in Sussex, the home of the Howards, and visited Sheffield only rarely. It was to be a long, slow decline, ending in demolition of most of the Manor almost a hundred years later in 1709.
During the first half of the 1600s there was some attempt by the new lord to maintain the Manor. A steward or agent lived in part of the building and repairs were regularly carried out.
In 1637 the Duke commissioned a survey of the manor from John Harrison which listed the valuable resources available to the Lord. Principal amongst these was the Park which was still ‘adorned with a great store of stately timber, a thousand fallow deer and an abundance of coal and ironstone.’ The Dukes were ready to realise these assets. The deer were cleared from the park and it was gradually let out to tenant farmers. By 1692 the boundary had been reduced to a length of only three miles although the Duke’s still jealously guarded their rights against people trespassing through it.
A Timely Rescue
The demolition of Sheffield Castle in 1648, however, had signalled the effective end of any real prospect of the Manor ever being restored. The Lodge buildings were still extensive, for in 1672 the steward was taxed on thirty six hearths there, but they, and their remaining contents, were becoming increasingly dilapidated. Very fortunately a Yorkshire historian called Nathaniel Johnson was allowed access to the Manor in 1671 and was able to rescue thousands of letters and documents of the Talbots and Mary Queen of Scots that were abandoned there. Many of them had already been damaged by damp and nibbled by mice but his work ensured the survival of this unique collection of papers.
In 1699 the Manor Lodge was leased to a man called Richard Richmond, an apothecary from London who was managing the Duke’s collieries in the Park. For the first, and only time, documents related to this transaction detailed the actual accommodation at the Manor at that time. The Norfolks however had little further use for the buildings and in 1708 an Act of Parliament authorised the Duke to demolish them. Over a few weeks in 1709 hundreds of ponds worth of building materials were carted from the site and sold to locals for new building projects. The contents were removed to the Duke’s house at Worksop where they were destroyed when the house burned down later that century. The Turret House, however, escaped demolition, having already been incorporated into a complex of barns and farm buildings.
The First Local Pottery.
Even following the demolition it is clear from old prints and paintings that much survived of the fabric of the building. The reason for this is that parts of it had been adapted to other uses as cottages and farm buildings. Excavation of the site in the 1970s has revealed that one part of the building had a very particular use. The tower where Cardinal Wolsey had lodged was adapted to house what was probably the first local pottery, producing a wide range of brown slipware products of which huge quantities have been discovered on the site. A local man called John Fox, who had links with other potteries and glass makers, was renting the site from about 1715.
The buildings survived as a picturesque ruin throughout the 18th century and local artists produced delightful paintings of the romantic site. These even show clearly that one of the brick entrance towers stood throughout this time. It blew down in a particularly furious gale in 1793.
