Educating Children of the Labouring Poor: Neepsend School and the Industrial City of Sheffield at the End of the Nineteenth Century

Summary

In the nineteenth century, the northern city of Sheffield in England developed significantly as the city’s traditional manufacturing output – metal and metalworking – was industrialised on a mass scale. To support this rapidly growing industrial city, services like railways and gasworks were constructed around the city perimeter, along with housing, shops, and other services and institutions. Neighbourhoods like the industrial colony of Parkwood Springs were home to long term residents, and a growing population of families. The city authorities became concerned with the formal education of these children of the industrial city, children of the 'labouring poor'. Built initially for the children – boys, girls, and infants – of men employed in the metal trades, the Neepsend School near Parkwood Springs attracted subscribers from across the city, as well as from within Parkwood itself. The school’s situation, amongst the works of Neepsend, firmly embedded the children’s education within the industrial cityscape. As an institution for the care as well as education, the building was carefully spatially divided and managed, communicating social behaviour as well as industrial training. Employing standing building survey, GIS, and archival research, this paper will examine the site of Neepsend School.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20558