The Invisible Castle
Writing Challenge 2023
Posted by Chris Sissons on Jun 21, 2023
Writing Challenge ยป Chris Sissons
Over the last few years, my experience walking up Waingate has not been so interesting. There is a hoarding and originally it featured a history of the site behind it. But it’s been tagged and beaten about so much that little makes sense anymore. There are some Perspex viewing panels but they’ve mostly been obscured by buddleia until someone cleared them away to reveal a rather desolate post-industrial wasteland.
The new Moor Market, at Moorfoot, on the other side of town is not a patch on the old Castle Market. I used to enjoy exploring its many floors, nooks and crannies. As a vegetarian, I adored the meat market, where you could view the peculiar things meat eaters down with relish! Tripe, cowheel, pigs feet, all manner of internal organs in various states of bloodiness or bleached.
I can remember visiting as a kid. There was a comics shop with piles of Marvel and DC comics, you could leaf through, find one that looked good and buy it for a few pence.
Sometime when I was still very young they had an open day and I remember descending flights of steps into the vaults beneath.
I didn’t know at the time but the Brightside and Carbrook Co-operative Society built an art novo department store on the same site in the 1930s. It was a magnificent building, with displays of artefacts they dug up when they built. It also held the historical records of B&C. Everything was lost when a bomb fell on it during the war.
Down another flight and now there were dozens of little steel workshops that spread along the Sheaf Valley. And another flight takes us past a bowling green.
When we reached the bottom we saw a few stones, the remnants of a wall of Sheffield Castle.
I found out the other week, from the Friends of Sheffield Castle that there are no contemporary pictures of the castle or plans. We have no idea what it looked like. I made a bee-line to their stall with a question they said no one had asked before.
What was Sheffield Castle called before it was Sheffield Castle? I knew the name Sheffield was younger than the Castle, which was built in the late eleventh or early twelfth century. The Castle was built on the corner where the Sheaf flows into the Don, the two rivers forming part of its moat.
The name is recorded in 1184 as Castellum de Seldfeld. Feld is field although it has connotations of open space, not enclosed as we would expect a field to be today. Seld was the name for the Sheaf. The castle took the name of the field and the town that grew around it took the name of the castle. Yes, there was one specific field!
They say we’ll be able to view the excavated foundations one day. They also plan to deculvert the Sheaf and build a pocket park. Maybe, in my dotage, I’ll be able to sit and dream of someone about a thousand years ago, contemplating the Seld, with their back to the manor house that preceded the Castle and not imagining the post-industrial wasteland to come.
This year's Writing Challenge, fueled by prompts, is about the City of Sheffield. Be surprised by what's included and even more surprised by what's left out. This is Post 11 and there are 21 altogether. Share your thoughts and your love for the City in the comments. The first Post 0 is Context: Sheffield. The last post 10 is Barkers Pool. The next post 12 is Stirrings.
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