Reformation To The Eighteenth Century
By the 1540s, the Burgery was unable to maintain essential public works, or to provide for local unemployed people. In 1554, a charter established the Twelve Capital Burgesses and Commonality of the Town and Parish of Sheffield to maintain the parish church and area immediately around it. This effectively split the old Burgery in two, while giving it increased powers and responsibilities.
In 1681, a commission formed a group of thirteen people, known as the Town Trustees, to assume the administrative role. This body was to be maintained by the nomination and appointment of the "greater number of inhabitants" of the town. The Trustees were headed by the Town Collector, one of the most senior officials in the town. They were to hold elections for new members only when three of their number were dead.
The Trustees were responsible for the repair of Lady's Bridge, Barkers Pool, various highways and the city's wells, and also for some charitable works. In 1700, they constructed a town hall by Sheffield Parish Church to provide themselves with a meeting place. By the eighteenth century, they were contributing to major works, including the River Don Navigation and the Sheffield to Chesterfield turnpike road. However, the increase in population of the early nineteenth century limited their ability to fulfil their duties. Other than subscriptions to the construction of a new Town Hall and Cutlers Hall, they restricted themselves to road works.
In 1757, the Town Trust paid 14s6d to cricketers on Shrove Tuesday, in an attempt "to entertain the populace and prevent the infamous practice of throwing at cocks". The match took place against Wirksworth, and may be the earliest indication of the Sheffield Cricket Club that eventually became Yorkshire County Cricket Club. Meanwhile, Joseph Hunter's Hallamshire claims that the Trust initiated horse racing at Crookesmoor in the early eighteenth century.
Read more about this topic: Sheffield Town Trust
Famous quotes containing the words eighteenth century, reformation, eighteenth and/or century:
“Our age is pre-eminently the age of sympathy, as the eighteenth century was the age of reason. Our ideal men and women are they, whose sympathies have had the widest culture, whose aims do not end with self, whose philanthropy, though centrifugal, reaches around the globe.”
—Frances E. Willard 1839–1898, U.S. president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1879-1891, author, activist. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 137-40 (January 1887)
“Go on then in doing with your pen what in other times was done with the sword; shew that reformation is more practicable by operating on the mind than on the body of man.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Our age is pre-eminently the age of sympathy, as the eighteenth century was the age of reason. Our ideal men and women are they, whose sympathies have had the widest culture, whose aims do not end with self, whose philanthropy, though centrifugal, reaches around the globe.”
—Frances E. Willard 1839–1898, U.S. president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1879-1891, author, activist. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 137-40 (January 1887)
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—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)