The two spellings Escafeld and Scafeld in Domesday cannot both be right, and seing that the spelling Sefeld is found in a deed less than a hundred years later than Domesday,[1] it is reasonable to suppose that Scafeld (pronounced Shaffeld)[2] is the truer form. It has been argued that Esca in Escafeld is the common river-name Esk. One answer to that suggestion is that no such river-name is known, or within historic memory has been known, in the district, nor is it easy to see how Esk could have been corrupted into such a very different word as Sheaf. Moreover we should on that supposition expect Sheffield to have been called Esk-field. the letter e was prefixed by the Norman scribe to Scafeld just as he would have written Estienne for Stephen (Greek ΣτέΦανος), or eschelle for 'ladder' (Latin scala), &c. A stronger objection to my argument is that river-names are rarely of Norse or Anglo-Saxon origin. Yet I think that the evidence here offered is far too strong to be rebutted by even that objection.
The traveller into the hill country of Derbyshire who comes straight from the north-east can only get there by passing through the hamlets of Dore and Totley. The ways are high and steep, so that a railway lately projected through these villages into the High Peak has a tunnel in its plans three miles in length. Here was the door, the English Thermopylæ, which our fathers kept and defended. Simple as is the story of the Chronicle, it is enough to show that in this village of Dore was acted the last scene of that great evolutionary drama which has been called 'the making of England.'
The evidence offered points to the following conclusions:—
- That at Dore, near Sheffield, in the year 827, the Northumbrians submitted to the rule of Egbert, King of the West Saxons.
- That the Sheaf is properly the Scheth, sheath or 'divider.'
- That the word Sheffield means 'the field of division.'
- That the men of Derbyshire had a fortified position or 'totyng hylle' at Totley.
- That the 'white well' of the A.-S. Chronicle is not Whitwell
no match
on the border of Notts, but may possibly refer to some stream flowing from the White Moss, near Dore, or to some stream in that village.
