Don Cutlery Works, Sheffield, July / August 2023

[albino-jay]

shame the type writer has gone,

That was quick 🙄

 

[tarkovsky]

Very Sheffield! Is this the place just down from Record??

Yeah it's that one.

 

[tarkovsky]

That was quick 🙄

Yeah. I haven't got it, btw! At least it won't end up as rubble now, anyway.

 

[tarkovsky]

Cheers for the comments everyone

And for the photos @tweek - really happy this place got some tweek pics too

 

[Bikin Glynn]

Nicely covered. I didnt get in here, was some guy burning stuff in the yard to the right when I was up that way!

 

[tarkovsky]

Nicely covered. I didnt get in here, was some guy burning stuff in the yard to the right when I was up that way!

Thanks. You don't have to worry about them, that land isn't connected - its a separate yard and business.

 

[Selly]

I have wanted to see in this place forever and I've been checking it regularly for a long time, so on the way home from the pub one evening last month when I saw a way in I was quite excited. My first visit, armed only with my phone, soon resulted in a fair amount of disappointment as I stumbled around what on the surface appeared to be a rapidly crumbling and seemingly empty deathtrap. However, my interest was piqued and there was enough of the place I'd still not seen that meant I couldnt just leave it there. It took a return visit with @Sheard to finally unearth some of it's hidden potential, followed by 'a few' further visits, including one in the company of @tweek and @Esoteric Eric - all of whom I thank for humouring me in my obsession with this place. It's only a derp, but it's not the kind of derp that comes up with any kind of regularity any more - and it's also the kind of place that proves that the 'UE as documenting history' thing isn't just something made up as a cover for having a naughty hobby.

Don Cutlery works is Grade 2 Listed: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-
entry/1392480?section=official-list-entry - the stuff about it being 'largely intact' is a bit laughable now, given how the state of the whole place has clearly declined dramatically since the listing was written.

The works were initially build for Southern & Richardson Cutlery who used the building from 1851 until 1910. Their corporate mark was a bird’s nest and three eggs... (slogan: 'Nest Knives are the Best Knives'). Employment was 161 in 1871; and 197 in 1881 (a quarter of them boys and girls). By the late 1880s, the workforce probably surpassed 200 (according to The Sheffield Independent, 6 September 1889, the firm employed about 300). Certainly, it was amongst the top twenty cutlery manufacturers in the town. However, working at the firm could be fatal. In 1858, a nine-year-old girl was ‘frightfully mutilated’ after entanglement in an unguarded grindstone shaft (Sheffield Independent, 2 October 1858).​

Source: Southern & Richardson Ltd

1899 saw what is referred to as 'The Sheffield Boiler Disaster' where the Lancashire Boiler that provided power to the works exploded, killing seven people - five men and two children. The inquest found that a defective water gauge was to blame. You can read more about the explosion in great detail on the link below. The guy in the pic in the top hat was apparently the owner of the cutlers.

Extract:



The Sheffield Boiler Disaster - 1st November 1899

More recently the building was used by J. W. Bartholomew and Sons, Sheet Metal Workers. They eventually left in 2005 to move to another site- all of the calendars still on the walls remain on the July 2005 page. The building is now owned by a nearby locksmith and security firm, who use the land round the back as a customer car park.

Here's a couple of external pics on film I took in 2019.

The rest of the photos in this thread are from the last few weeks. The typewriter dates from early 1900s and features two full sets of keys - one for capitals and one for lower case. The packets of ointments and bandages are from a first aid box - the antiseptic cream came in really handy when I stood on a rusty nail and it went all the way into my foot. The typewriter was presumably used to type out the carefully typed records, neatly filed away in two drawers - most of these dated from the 1930s and detailed orders from all over the country for items such as door knobs, fire guards, ashpans, 'hot closet plates', 'flue extension pieces' etc etc. Some of these were handwritten too. We found these, along with the typewriter, on a high shelf in a really small room that - judging from the layers of accumulated dirt on the other side of the door - hadn’t been opened for many years. The setup below was for the purpose of the photos - nobody would actually sit at a safe to use a typewriter, but given that most of the building is boarded up this was one of the few rooms that provided enough light to take a decent photo (note: on my most recent visit I noticed the typewriter has now gone walkies)

Note the Union Jack sicker on the first aid room door - I’ll come back to that later.

The newspaper was an issue of the Sheffield Star from 1991.

The stationery features the mark of long-forgotten Sheffield stationers, Pawson and Brailsford.

Of particular interest in the grade two listing from 1998 is the presence of 'a hydraulic press, electric motor, and line shafting to the rebuilt single-storey workshop'. Pretty happy when we opened another door and found... it's all still there.

A few black and white film

In the next thread I'll throw in some digi / iPhone pics and a little more related historical trivia.​

Cracking report again my man

 

[tarkovsky]

Cracking report again my man

Thank u!

 

[dweeb]

Been eying that up since around 2005, great to see inside it finally. Better than I would have anticipated!

Beautifully shot by the way lads.

 

[tarkovsky]

Been eying that up since around 2005, great to see inside it finally. Better than I would have anticipated!

Beautifully shot by the way lads.

Thank you! Definitely some element of delayed gratification in having waited so long to see it, and there actually being something left of it to see in 2023.

 

[jones-y-gog]

Good to see that there are still gems like this out there and people that still appreciate them enough to put a great report like this together. This is what 'urbex' should be but sadly so rarely is these days.
Things like the history behind the sticker just adds a lot to the story - love it!

 

[tarkovsky]

Good to see that there are still gems like this out there and people that still appreciate them enough to put a great report like this together. This is what 'urbex' should be but sadly so rarely is these days.
Things like the history behind the sticker just adds a lot to the story - love it!

Thanks! Yeah, I think 'urbex' can be lots of things, but it's always this kind of local stuff that makes me want to dig the deepest, and put the most time in. Always encouraging to know there's still stuff out there.

 

[JaffaTB]

Pass this amost every week and never even looked at it, so close to a lot of other pins on my map as well reminds me of George Barnsleys.