| Sheffield | |
|---|---|
 Cottages at Sheffield | |
  Sheffield Location within Cornwall | |
| OS grid reference | SW457269 |
| Civil parish | |
| Unitary authority | |
| Ceremonial county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | PENZANCE |
| Postcode district | TR19 |
| Dialling code | 01736 |
| Police | Devon and Cornwall |
| Fire | Cornwall |
| Ambulance | South Western |
| UK Parliament | |
Sheffield is a hamlet in Cornwall, England, situated near the village of Paul.
Sheffield is thought to have been established to house the workers of the Sheffield Quarry and later the surrounding farms. The settlement was built along the road into Penzance where the quarry's stone had to be carted for shipment. However, the area is thought to have been inhabited as far back as Mesolithic (8000 BC to 4001 BC) and Neolithic (4000 BC to 2501 BC) times. Items from this era were recovered from an arable field at Sheffield Farm by Ian Blackmore in 2003.
The principal stone of the district is the well-known Land's End granite, which was extensively quarried at Sheffield Quarry, a post-medieval quarry dating from between 1540 AD to the late 1920s. [1]
Sheffield Quarry's granite was highly prized due to its superior quality and strength. The quarry yielded a very coarse-grained grey granite with large felspar crystals; [2] the crystals interlock and lie in all directions adding to its strength, although this made quarrying more difficult it remained valuable as the margins of granite close to Penzance and St Ives did not yield such a good quality of stone.
After the Beerhouse Act 1830, a kiddlywink (or kiddle-e-wink), which is an old name for a Cornish beer shop or beer house, was thought to have been set up in what is now No. 2 Lower Sheffield and a paraffin store constructed next door (now No. 1). Kiddlywinks were reputed to be the haunts of smugglers and often had an unmarked bottle of spirits under the counter, however farm and quarry labourers were also known to receive beer instead of wages. Sheffield continued to grow and prosper until it was large enough to warrant a chapel and Sunday school.
Teetotal Wesleyan chapel, built around 1845, was later a New Connexion chapel and then converted to a Wesleyan School, it has now been converted to a house. A blacksmith at Sheffield is also shown on the OS map of 1875.
After the war Australian-born artist Barbara Tribe (1913–2000) moved into the old Sunday School in Sheffield, Cornwall, an area rich in artists, with her husband the architect John Singleman, and converted it into a studio. Tribe lived in the house for the rest of her life and worked alongside some of the most influential British artists of her time. She became a lecturer in Modelling and Sculpture at the Penzance School of Art, where she remained for 40 years, while her husband re-trained as a potter under Bernard Leach.
Many artists still live and work in the immediate area today due to the quality of the light, which has attracted artists dating back to when the railways made it possible to travel easily to the far West. Sheffield can be found just outside Newlyn, home to the world-famous Newlyn School and up the road from the picturesque fishing port of Mousehole.
Lamorna is a village, valley and cove in west Cornwall, England, UK. It is on the Penwith peninsula approximately 4 miles (6 km) south of Penzance. Lamorna became popular with the artists of the Newlyn School, including Alfred Munnings, Laura Knight and Harold Knight, and is also known for former residents Derek and Jean Tangye who farmed land and wrote "The Minack Chronicles".
St Michael's Mount is a tidal island in Mount's Bay, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The island is a civil parish and is linked to the town of Marazion by a causeway of granite setts, passable between mid-tide and low water. It is managed by the National Trust, and the castle and chapel have been the home of the St Aubyn family since around 1650.
Penzance is a town, civil parish and port in the Penwith district of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is the most westerly major town in Cornwall and is about 64 miles (103 km) west-southwest of Plymouth and 255 miles (410 km) west-southwest of London. Situated in the shelter of Mount's Bay, the town faces south-east onto the English Channel, is bordered to the west by the fishing port of Newlyn, to the north by the civil parish of Madron and to the east by the civil parish of Ludgvan. The civil parish includes the town of Newlyn and the villages of Mousehole, Paul, Gulval, and Heamoor. Granted various royal charters from 1512 onwards and incorporated on 9 May 1614, it has a population of 21,200.
Newlyn is a seaside town and fishing port in south-west Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is the largest fishing port in England.
Norman Garstin was an Irish artist, teacher, art critic and journalist associated with the Newlyn School of painters. After completing his studies in Antwerp and Paris, Garstin travelled around Europe and painted some of his first professional paintings while on the journey. He later took students to Europe to some of his favourite places.
Merrivale is a locality in western Dartmoor, in the West Devon district of Devon, England. It is best known for the nearby series of Bronze Age megalithic monuments to the south and a former granite quarry.
Stanhope Alexander Forbes was a British artist and a founding member of the influential Newlyn school of painters. He was often called 'the father of the Newlyn School'.
St Levan is a civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The parish is rural with a number of hamlets of varying size with Porthcurno probably being the best known. Hewn out of the cliff at Minack Point and overlooking the sea to the Logan Rock is the open-air Minack Theatre, the inspiration of Rowena Cade in the early 1930s.
St Buryan is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of St Buryan, Lamorna and Paul in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. In 2011 the parish had a population of 1412.
Sancreed is a village and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, approximately three miles (5 km) west of Penzance.
Mining in Cornwall and Devon, in the southwest of Britain, is thought to have begun in the early-middle Bronze Age with the exploitation of cassiterite. Tin, and later copper, were the most commonly extracted metals. Some tin mining continued long after the mining of other metals had become unprofitable, but ended in the late 20th century. In 2021, it was announced that a new mine was extracting battery-grade lithium carbonate, more than 20 years after the closure of the last South Crofty tin mine in Cornwall in 1998.
Wherrytown is a small settlement in west Cornwall, United Kingdom, on the east side of the Laregan River, between Newlyn and Penzance. It was formerly in the civil parish of Madron and was incorporated into the Borough of Penzance in 1934 when local government was reorganised.
New Mill is a small settlement in west Cornwall, England. It is approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) north of Penzance on the road to Gurnard's Head.
The Penlee Quarry railway was a 2 ft narrow-gauge industrial railway serving the Penlee Quarry at Newlyn in Cornwall, England, UK. It was Cornwall's most westerly railway and one of the last operating narrow-gauge industrial railways in the UK.
Joseph Carne was a British geologist and industrialist.
Elizabeth Catherine Thomas Carne (1817–1873) was a British author, natural philosopher, geologist, conchologist, mineral collector, and philanthropist. In later years, following her father's death, she also became a banker. Today we would probably place her contributions to science in the realm of human ecology.
Penlee House is a museum and art gallery located in the town of Penzance in Cornwall, and is home to a great many paintings by members of the Newlyn School, including many by Stanhope Forbes, Norman Garstin, Walter Langley and Lamorna Birch. Penlee House is currently operated by Penzance Town Council in association with Cornwall Council. Well-known works from the renowned Newlyn School include The Rain It Raineth Every Day by Norman Garstin, School is Out by Elizabeth Forbes, Among the Missing by Walter Langley and On Paul Hill by Stanhope Forbes.
Harold Harvey (1874–1941) was a Newlyn School painter who painted scenes of working-class Cornish fishermen, farmers and miners and Cornish landscapes. He was born in Penzance and trained at the Penzance School of Arts under Norman Garstin and the Académie Julian in Paris (1894–1896).
Annie Walke or Anne Fearon Walke was an English artist. Anne Fearon grew up and was schooled in Banstead, Surrey. After completing her studies at the Chelsea School of Art and the London School of Art, she and her sister, Hilda Fearon, furthered their studies in Dresden, Germany. About the turn of the 20th century Miss Fearon settled in Cornwall, where she continued her studies and established a studio in the Cornish coastal village of Polruan. After she married Nicolo Bernard Walke in 1911, she soon moved with him to St Hilary, Cornwall. where her husband became the vicar in 1913. She was a member of the Newlyn School and other artists' organizations and created portraits and religious works for churches. Her work has been exhibited in England, Paris, America and South Africa. In the latter part of her life Walke was a published poet.
Barbara Tribe (1913–2000) was an Australian-born artist who spent most of her career in Cornwall. She is regarded as a significant twentieth-century portrait artist, working both in painting and sculpture.
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