The Fairbank Collection

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This article first appeared in the Transactions of The Hunter Archaeological Society and is reproduced by kind permission of the Society.

THE FAIRBANK COLLECTION.

THE Fairbank Collection was given to the City of Sheffield in July, 1932, by Mr. R. D. Bennett, of Messrs. A. Smith, Denton & Co. It consists of the plans and business papers of the Fairbank family, who practised as surveyors in Sheffield from about 1743 to 1848, when they left the town, and is remarkable for size and completeness.

The majority of the plans are the work of the second William Fairbank, his sons William and Josiah, and Josiah’s son, William Fairbank Fairbank. The Collection comprises:-

1. Approximately 6,000 plans of Sheffield and other places chiefly in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and of roads, railways, canals, and other engineering undertakings. 1743-1848.

2. Approximately 700 field books, building books, account books, and surveys for tithe, inclosure and rate. 1752-1848.

3. Two boxes of correspondence and other papers. 1750-1848.

4. Records of the Sheffield and Glossop Turnpike Trust. 1816-1875.

5: About 50 manuscripts relating to 'Sheffield and Birley Carr.

The nucleus of the Collection is the series of plans and field books, which in themselves provide an accurate general history of the neighbourhood. The value of plans to the local historian can hardly be over-estimated, since they can be used in almost any branch of history, either for the discovery of new facts or for verification and checking of known facts. For biographical purposes they help to fix dates, places of residence, and extent of wealth in land; they give really reliable evidence for disputed sites; and for the study of place-names they are invaluable.

About 2,400 of these plans cover every part of the Parish of Sheffield, and illustrate the developments of the town during a century of rapid expansion. It has been possible, by careful comparison with the admirably-kept field books, to determine the date and purpose of the majority. The movements of families, the activities of local government bodies, and, the sites of vanished landmarks such as bridges, mills, houses, footpaths, coalpits, toll bars, ponds and wells, can be traced in them.

A special feature of the Fairbank plans is that they show the growth of the town street by street, giving the layout of building schemes, the owners affected, and the names of the original purchasers of lots. Many parts of the town were mapped several times, showing their development through open field, inclosure, street¬making, and the successive buildings. The history of the streets adjoining the Moor and London Road, for instance, can be traced in this manner.

The plans are for the most part drafts for office use, and many of them bear no explanatory writing. The survival of an almost complete series of field books is therefore fortunate and, it is believed, almost unique.

The surveyors frequently noted in their field books details of antiquarian interest which do not appear on the plans, and their notes connected with the business - as, for instance, an item of local information with the name and occupation of the man who gave it are often of value.

Of special Sheffield interest, also, are the building books which deal with the period 1752-1800, at first included in the field books, but from 1765 forming a separate series. These give the costs and details of erecting, altering and decorating private houses and public buildings, chiefly in Sheffield. They contain materials for the history of trades, history of prices, and biography.

There are about 1,500 plans of places outside Sheffield, the majority in the adjacent parts of Yorkshire and Derbyshire. They include pre-inclosure village maps, Award maps, and the estates of notable landowners. All of them are valuable for the study of place¬names and family history.

The pre-inclosure maps are of special interest to students of social and agrarian history, since the villages of the north differ in many ways, owing to the Danish Occupation and repeated devastations, from those of the south and west of England, and have not been so carefully studied.

The majority of the village and estate plans are accompanied by books of reference, terriers and assessments for rate, and each set of Inclosure maps has its accompanying books giving the details of the procedure, costs, and roadmaking and fencing.

Josiah Fairbank was agent for the Crown Manor of Eckington, and the collection includes a series of surveys and rentals and twelve volumes of correspondence dealing with the manor.

The engineering plans are mainly of railways, roads, canals, water-works and collieries. The Fairbanks were engineers for most of the turnpike roads of Derbyshire, and did an enormous amount of work all over England during the railway boom of the 1840's.

The correspondence and business papers have as yet been, only tentatively explored. They contain a century's domestic, business and social history, and will probably prove in many ways the most valuable part of the Collection, since they link Sheffield with interests wider than purely local affairs.

The Collection is now housed in the new Central Library and an index is being prepared which will bring together the information in its various sections under place headings. The amount of fact and illustration which it contains is very large, and will reward study undertaken from almost any angle. From the historian's point of view this is the most valuable gift the city has received for many years.

An account of the Fairbank family and the Collection was published by Mr. T. Walter Hall in June, 1932. His concise bio¬graphies of the members of the family include everything that is known about them with certainty; from the first Fairbank of Heptonstall to the present representative in York; and he gives a history of the Collection and a short description of its contents.

The greater part of the book consists of a series of excellent reproductions of entries in the field books; the examples are selected for their general local interest and are accompanied by full explanations and notes on the sites. A reproduction of the Sheffield map of 1771 and one of M. Oddie's plan of the second William Fairbank's house in Coalpit Lane complete a representative selection which illustrates the remarkable range of interest covered by the Collection.

(For examples from this book see this Thread)

[Guest 30_degrees]

This article first appeared in the Transactions of The Hunter Archaeological Society and is reproduced by kind permission of the Society.

THE FAIRBANK COLLECTION.

The Collection is now housed in the new Central Library and an index is being prepared which will bring together the information in its various sections under place headings. The amount of fact and illustration which it contains is very large, and will reward study undertaken from almost any angle. From the historian's point of view this is the most valuable gift the city has received for many years.

(For examples from this book see this Thread)

Roll on the index :)