Sheffield Manufacturing History

Sheffield was to steel as Manchester was to cotton and Leeds to wool.

In the beginning it was the combination of fast flowing water and the availability of coal and iron ore. Hundreds of small furnaces would hide the skies of Hallamshire with their dark smoke. An equal number of forges would fill the air with the sound of hammer on anvil. By the streams, tens of water mills would drive grinding wheels to add a sharp edge to the knives men made. This was Sheffield in the sixteenth century, or rather its was Hallamshire – that area of north Derbyshire and south Yorkshire which now makes up greater Sheffield. It was unique in having such a high proportion of its working population engaged in one trade. The trade was centred round ‘little mesters' working in smithies. A Company of Cutlers was formed by Act of Parliament in 1624. I find myself comparing them to the spinners and weavers of Lancashire who would also work in a small family unit. The destiny of Hallamshire was to be the city of cutlers and a steel industry that would transform the world.

London, of which I write more elsewhere, was by far the largest urban area and so gathered to it essentially all the trades necessary for urban life. So it had then more cutlers than Sheffield as it had more framework knitters than the East Midland towns of Leicester, Nottingham and Derby.

The iron ore found in Hallamshire was adequate, but not the best; this came increasingly from Sweden and Russia and was worked into steel in small quantities suitable for knife making. The reign of Charles II saw the introduction of the fork alongside the knife on the tables of the wealthy and so Sheffield designs changed from the pointed, dagger style of knife to something nearer to that which we might recognise.

Two challenges faced the Sheffield cutlers: how to get their cutlery to market in an efficient and economical way and how to produce more steel of a consistently high quality able to take a truly sharp edge.

As to the first challenge, given the state of the roads, carriage by boat was the transport of choice. For Sheffield this meant an overland trip to Doncaster and the navigable river Don, but it was a long way from satisfactory.

Elsewhere in the country canals were being cut; given its topography, Sheffield would have to wait until the mid-nineteenth century for its canal to join the town to the Don. In the meantime the turnpike movement was improving roads and for Sheffield this proved a more than satisfactory stop gap before the canal and, a little later, the railway.

As to the second it is important to recognise that there was two sides to Sheffield’s steel story. The first has a focus on steel cutlery, but also silver and silver plate. The second was about the move to mass production which would transform the town of cutlers into the world’s prime producer of steel, the essential material for all manner of machine, and so fundamental to the further development of the industrial revolution. 

The then traditional cementation method of making 'blister' steel produced material of inconsistent quality and this spurred Lincolnshire watchmaker, Benjamin Hunstman, to years of experimentation to find a better method. 1742 is the date given to the new ‘hunstman crucible process' which provided quality steel in relatively small quantities suitable for fine work. Hunstman, himself, moved to Sheffield to focus on steel making.

Photo taken at the wonderful Kelham Island Museum

At about the same time Thomas Boulsover developed a method for plating copper with silver, ‘Old Sheffield Plate’.  This and Huntsman’s steel provided the raw material for a massive increase in production of all manner of small items for the home. A little later, Britannia Metal was developed as a yet cheaper material for household use.

Sheffield silversmiths found that their time had come and the town received its own assay office, at the same time as Birmingham, in 1773. Electroplating of steel with silver was championed by Elkington in Birmingham and this too found its way to Sheffield. Sheffield cutlery was to be found on dining tables across the globe. The technical developments led to larger manufacturing units and in time the introduction of steam power. The town saw companies making cutlery with workforces numbered in the hundreds: Joseph Rodgers, whose cutlery was marked by the Star and Maltese Cross, and Mappin which later became Mappin & Webb, to name but two.

The consistent quality of Huntsman steel proved suitable for use in a larger number of applications. Spear & Jackson set up their works in the town and tool making more generally took off with the increased demand from so many now involved in manufacturing of all kinds across the nation and beyond.

Photo taken at the wonderful Kelham Island Museum

Quantities of steel though were still insufficient and this spurred Henry Bessemer to explore alternative processes. He announced his invention of the Bessemer Converter in 1856 and set up in Carlisle Street, Sheffield as the Bessemer Steel Works.

At this point the ‘famous names ‘of Sheffield steel come to the fore. John Brown, later known as the father of steel, was the first to embrace the Bessemer process, followed by Charles Cammell in 1861. Vickers embraced the open hearth process developed later by William Siemens.

Another famous name, Thomas Firth & Sons, made their focus on armaments and another, Jessop, is perhaps less well known now and focused on supplying the American market until Carnegie began to explore the large reserves of ore in Pennsylvania.

The demand for steel was predominantly for the construction of railways in Britain, continental Europe, North and South America. This demand weakened in the 1870s and the production of armaments took its place, both armour plating and heavy guns and their shells. Sheffield became increasingly known for speciality steels. Cammells and Browns had a focus on armour plating. It was Hadfields that explored alloys and in particular the addition of manganese to harden steel for use in armour piercing shells.

I write more about the early British steel industry in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World, and the American and German steel industries on this blog. It is surely revealing that the german Krupp travelled to Sheffield to learn the Hunstman process.

At one time Sheffield was the biggest producer of steel in the world, its importance underlined by it being created a city of 1893. A final development of lasting importance was the invention of stainless steel by Harry Brearley in 1913.

The First World war was a busy time for Sheffield with the massive demand for armaments. With the coming of peace that demand collapsed. Sheffield companies responded by merging with the resulting English Steel Corporation (owned by Vickers and Cammells) and Firth Brown. English Steel was run by Edgar Redman who in the Second World War joined the RAOC to run the army centre for mechanisation at Chilwell near Nottingham. He returned to English Steel after the war where he was joined by fellow soldier Ronald Weeks who became chairman and subsequently chairman of Vickers. Davy Ashmore was another of the great steel companies and I write of it Vehicles to Vaccines in the context of its engineering. The Sheffield industry essentially followed the path of the national steel industry and I tell its story in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Sheffield now boasts the nationalised Sheffield Forgemasters which produces large precision castings; the company brought together the heritage of the Sheffield greats: Vickers, Cammell, Firth and Brown.

Sheffield still has fine silversmiths this year celebrating four centuries of the Cutlers Company.

It has a vibrant community of designer makers many of whom exhibited at Selected Space.

It is a city looking to the future with the University of Sheffield hosting the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. It is still a place of traditional skills such as William Whiteley scissors, Chimo Holdings cutlers, Thomas Flinn woodworking tools combining traditional skills and new technology and Wolf Safety Lamps.

Further reading

David Hey, A History of Sheffield, (Lancaster: Carnegie Publishing, 1998)