A Slice Of Yorkshire History
Rosemary Collins finds out about a project uncovering the story of Sheffield’s cutlers
Ask anyone what industry they associate with She!eld in South Yorkshire and the most likely answer will be steel, particularly knife making. The Hawley Collection Trust aims to preserve the city’s knife-making heritage with a collection of more than 100,000 items, which was started by Ken Hawley (1927–2014) and is held at Kelham Island Museum. Some of the most interesting items are knives with the name of the manufacturer on them.
“The older the knife is, going back to before the invention of stainless steel, you’ll often also get a nice logo, sometimes the name of the factory, and sometimes a mark saying ‘Made in She!eld’. So essentially there’s a story of She!eld written on that knife blade,” says Nick Duggan, volunteer curator at the trust.
In March 2019, the trust received a £37,000 grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund for the ‘Name on a Knife Blade’ project, with the aim of creating a searchable database of the names and the cutlers behind them. The database is now available at hawleysheffieldknives.com, with 1,200 names listed. The project’s team of 15 volunteers created an entry for each knife maker. Author Geo"rey Tweedale provided them with free access to his book Directory of She eld Cutlery Manufacturers 1740–2013, published in 2013, and they used additional resources such as trade directories and newspapers. Nick also gave talks online about She!eld’s knife industry and its manufacturers, which are available at youtube.com/c/KenHawleyCollectionTrust/videos.
Some of the entries are very concise, but others contain extensive information about a cutler or a manufacturer. For example, searching for ‘Butcher’ reveals a detailed entry for W & S Butcher Ltd, including information about the brothers who founded the company, William (1791–1870) and Samuel (1795–1869), and an old street map showing the location of the Butcher Works on Arundel Street.
The entry is fascinating, including such details as the fact that, after a dispute with trade unions, William Butcher and his wife had a can of gunpowder tossed into their bedroom, and that Samuel travelled to New York as a merchant as early as 1823.
“I didn’t know when I started on this project that some of these She!eld cutlers were going over to America. Some of them might have made 10 journeys at a time when it was probably di!cult to get from She!eld to London, never mind from She!eld to Philadelphia or New York or California. There’re factories in She!eld that are named the ‘Washington Works’ and ‘Philadelphia Works’ because the American market was so important.”
The collection has its own gallery at Kelham Island Museum, where the trust has created a new permanent exhibition telling the story of the industry. Its plans for the future include adding manufacturers of pocket knives and penknives to the database, and creating 3D photographs of the objects in the collection. The database is available to search in the museum as well as online, and has already had 85,000 views.
“A few months ago I was in the gallery showing somebody how to search the database using the touchscreen interface. He pointed to a name and said, ‘That’s my grandad.’ The project really has engaged with people and their families.”
Some of these Sheffield cutlers were going over to America