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10 April 1877: Echoing Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, John Collier tells a meeting at Walkley (Sheffield) that there was an initial local separation between Normans and Anglo-Saxons

Sheffield Daily Telegraph. 1877/04/14. Old Walkley. Sheffield. Get it:

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Excerpt

First on the record of people who lived near Walkley was no other than the great Saxon Earl Waltheof. The antiquarian Joseph Hunter was of opinion that he had his residence or aula at Rivelin, hence the name of Hallamshire – the district round the aula. This great man married Judith, the niece of William the Conqueror, but having joined in a conspiracy against him he was taken and beheaded at Winchester; and it is supposed that both the aula and vill of Hallam were completely annihilated by William, and may have remained a desolation ever since. The names of the old inhabitants were somewhat remarkable, as denoting an Anglo-Saxon settlement – Bradshaw, Egbro’, Spooner, Marsden, etc. It was probable that the Norman warriors would settle around the dwelling place of their chief at the junction of the Don and Sheaf, near Lady’s Bridge, whilst the milder Saxons of peaceful lives and agricultural occupations would betake themselves to the neighbouring hills for quietness and shelter.

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Comment

David Clarke:

[T]he idea of Anglo-Saxon identity exerted a strong influence upon writers who collected folklore in Hallamshire, the geographical region that became the city of Sheffield in the modern county of South Yorkshire… [T]hat identity coalesced around two folk heroes, Earl Waltheof and Robin Hood (Robin of Loxley), who are portrayed in literature and folklore as ethnic Saxon rebels who fought against Norman occupation of the region. Both also came to symbolise the region’s independence of spirit and its rebelliousness. Today they are regarded as distinctly English national folk heroes, but their complex links with the folklore of southwest Yorkshire is less well known. During the nineteenth century, their legends became part of an imagined heritage based upon ideas of Anglo-Saxon indigeneity to Britain. As a result, folklore interacted with history to create a hybrid of fact, story and interpretation that persists to the present day… The rebel traditions of [southwest Yorkshire are] reflected in Victorian literature. Barczewski (2000, 132) notes that, ‘virtually every major fictional text written after 1820 features the conflict between Saxon and Norman as a prominent motif,’ and this division is projected backwards in accounts of the history and folklore of southwest Yorkshire. The most influential example is Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1820). His novel is set in the twelfth century, a generation after the Norman Conquest, and the narrative is located geographically in the valley of the River Don… Scott (1820; 2000, 15) says, ‘here flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have been rendered so popular in English song.’ The plot of Ivanhoe is centred upon an imagined, ongoing struggle between dispossessed Saxons and their Norman lords that post-dated the Norman Conquest. Significantly, the outlaw Robin Hood – ‘Locksley’ – is both a central character and a figurehead for the freedom fighters.

(Clarke 2022)

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