Sheen is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

in the

Staffordshire Moorlands Staffordshire Moorlands is a local government district in Staffordshire, England. Its council is based in Leek, the district's largest town. The district also contains the towns of Biddulph and Cheadle, along with a large rural area containing ...

district, in north-east

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation ''Staffs''.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It borders Cheshire to the north-west, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, ...

, England. In 2011 the parish had a population of 234. The parish is about north to south and about east to west. The eastern boundary is the River Dove (the boundary with

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south a ...

), and the western boundary is the

River Manifold The River Manifold is a river in Staffordshire, England. It is a tributary of the River Dove (which also flows through the Peak District, forming the boundary between Derbyshire and Staffordshire). The Manifold rises at Flash Head just south ...

.A P Baggs, M F Cleverdon, D A Johnston and N J Tringham, "Sheen", in ''A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 7, Leek and the Moorlands, ed. C R J Currie and M W Greenslade (London, 1996), pp. 239-250''
British History Online. Accessed 7 June 2019. There is a north-west to south-east ridge forming Sheen Moor; the village of Sheen, on a road running north–south through the parish, is near the southern end of the ridge. The highest point, at , is Sheen Hill. Hulme End, near the southern boundary, has height ; Knowsley, near the northern boundary, has height . There is a steep escarpment to the River Dove in the east, and the ground falls less steeply to the River Manifold in the west. There is scattered settlement throughout the parish. The parish was described in 1851: "The face of the country is here wild and romantic, but the soil about the village is fertile and well enclosed."

History

The name Sheen may come from

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

''sceon'': shelters (perhaps herdsmen's shelters); or Old English ''sceone'': beautiful.

Prehistoric

There are three

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

bowl barrow A bowl barrow is a type of burial mound or tumulus. A barrow is a mound of earth used to cover a tomb. The bowl barrow gets its name from its resemblance to an upturned bowl. Related terms include ''cairn circle'', ''cairn ring'', ''howe'', ''ker ...

s. Brund Low, near crossroads north of the hamlet of Brund, is about high and about across; excavations in the 19th century found human cremations and flint and bronze artifacts. Rye Low, a short distance east of Brund, is about high and about across; excavations found deposits of vegetation and insects, also cremated bones and flint artifacts. A barrow near buildings south of Townend is about high and about across; cremations and flint artifacts have been found.

Church

There was a chapel at Sheen by 1185. The present Church of St Luke at Sheen, presumably on the same site, is a Grade II*

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

. Its origins are of the 14th century; it was mostly rebuilt between 1828 and 1832, using stone from Sheen Hill. The church was later described as "a well meant but wholly unecclesiastical structure". A. J. B. Hope offered to rebuild it at his own expense; the new church, designed by C. W. Burleigh and later by

William Butterfield William Butterfield (7 September 1814 – 23 February 1900) was a British Gothic Revival architect and associated with the Oxford Movement (or Tractarian Movement). He is noted for his use of polychromy. Biography William Butterfield was bo ...

, was consecrated in 1852.

A. J. B. Hope

In about 1850 Sir Alexander James Beresford Beresford Hope, known as A. J. B. Hope, inherited the Beresford estate, which was mostly in

Alstonefield Alstonefield (alternative spelling: Alstonfield) is a village and civil parish in the Peak District National Park and the Staffordshire Moorlands district of Staffordshire, England about north of Ashbourne, east of Leek and south of Buxton. ...

, extending into Sheen. He wanted to make Sheen "the Athens of the Moorlands". He rebuilt the church, and built a new house for the incumbent to the design of William Butterfield. He also built a school with house attached, on glebe land south of the church, and a lending library and reading room, which was opened in 1856. (It closed, for lack of support, in 1889.) It was remarked in ''

The Ecclesiologist The Cambridge Camden Society, known from 1845 (when it moved to London) as the Ecclesiological Society,

Buildings

At Knowsley in the north of the parish is the shaft of a stone cross, 15th-century or later. It was re-erected near its former site in 1897. Broadmeadow Hall, near the River Dove, is a stone farmhouse of the mid-17th century, a Grade II* listed building. It was restored in the 19th century, and in the early 1990s. There was a house here by 1573, when it was acquired by the Sleigh family. During the 17th century it became the manor house of Sheen, until 1709 when Gervase Sleigh sold the manor. The Staffordshire Knot, an inn in Sheen, has had the name since before 1872. In the mid-19th century its name was The Horse Shoe, and was run by John Woolley, a blacksmith. Beresford Manor, in the south-east of the parish, dates from the 17th century, with early 19th-century additions.

References