Archaeological Practice in the Inter-War Years

The rediscovery of Sheffield Castle commenced in earnest in 1927, with the construction of the new city-centre store of the Brightside and Carbrook Co-operative Society and (shortly afterwards) of Sheffield Corporation’s Castle Hill Market just to the north. The paper Leslie Armstrong published in the Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society in 1930 was based on observations made during this construction work. This seminal paper has been the principal source for all subsequent understanding of Sheffield Castle (e.g. Walton 1949, 21–2; Fine 2003, 36, 41; Jones 2004, 27; Hey 2010, 15; Hallam 2015) but has been subject to little critical scrutiny, and few have considered the inevitable shortcomings of efforts to record the remains of the castle in the pressurised circumstances of commercial construction. Nor has the role and influence of Armstrong’s collaborator Joseph Himsworth been adequately assessed or, indeed, acknowledged. In this chapter we use unpublished sources in the Museums Sheffield archive including correspondence, diaries, lecture notes and excavation records, as well as contemporary newspaper articles, to situate Armstrong and Himsworth’s work (both on site and in publication) in the context of the personalities involved, the prevailing intellectual climate, archaeological practice, and understandings of the past and of its value in contemporary society. In this first part of the story of the uncovering of Sheffield Castle, it is the amateur enthusiasts, local heroes battling against the odds, who take centre stage, the man from the Inland Revenue supported, aptly for Sheffield, by the son of a cutler. In their work we see a narrative emerging around the castle, we feel the excitement and thrill of discovery that shines through the manuscript sources – and the myth making commences.