Single Aspect Blog

“Sheffield steel” is so ingrained in the language and the city that out of simple curiousity I have spent some time walking around the Kelham Island area following the history of steel-making.  To this end the excellent “Furnace Trail” booklet provides an introduction.

What I plan to do here is to show you a few photographs from places along the route in the hope that it will encourage you to do the same.  The booklet may be purchased for £3 from the Kelham Island Museum which lies at the heart of the trail.

Let’s go to Kelham Island!

The route is well sign posted from the Castle Market end of town. You’ll know you’re in the right area owing to the abundance of penal institutions such as South Yorkshire Police Headquarters, the Magistrates Court, the old Magistrates Court, Howell’s Solicitors and so on.

From there you should be able to see the sign above or similar and make your way out to Kelham Island and the starting point of the walk which is conveniently enough, a pub, called the Fat Cat.

I’ve had a pint in there and it was fine so regardless of the fact that the award was 2004 rest assured of a friendly welcome and a comfortable pub.  At under £2 a pint, coming from the expensive South that’s another welcome discovery.

The trail starts in the car park of the Fat Cat and asks you to look into a square pit with water running through it that used to hold a large water wheel.  The mountings are still in place but not in alignment with the original position of the wheel, a fact that leads me to believe it was geared up or down in order to better match the required speed of the machinery.

Click the image above and the fenced off area to the left of the big steel bucket is the water wheel pit.

Walk over to the gates of the museum to look at the Bessemer Converter used for making large quantities of steel at one time.

“At a more general level the last Bessemer converters in Britain (in Workington) were moved to Sheffield for museum preservation after initiatives to secure on-site preservation failed”

sustaining-englands-ind-heritage.pdf

Walk past the museum along the route of the river towards the steel gates.  If they are open pass through and look to your right where you will see a crucible furnace identifiable by yellow bands of bricks high up on the wall.

These are above a lean to roof which houses the Crucible Works visitor centre.  This was closed at the time of my visit but an example of the top level of a crucible furnace may be seen below (in Ball St).

look up at the wall of the pub where you can see (in the photograph above) the inscription Cotton Mill Walk referring to a building long gone that was a factory and later workhouse in the C19th.

The trail follows the river towards the city centre at this point identifying bridges and a sculpture made from grindstones discovered in the foundations of the adjacent building.

Beside the river at Shalesmoor

The trail moves on to the Irwin Mitchell building in Millsands where there are the remains of a furnace in the courtyard preserved under glass although when I visited the reflection of daylight from the dirty surface was such that it was difficult to see in.  Perhaps a night visit would improve things given that the space is illuminated.

On the ring road near the new roundabout stands a brick wall that holds the remains of a cementation furnace.

The two photographs above show the remains of a cementation furnace emerging from a brick wall preserved beside the new ring road.

Along the Shalesmoor ring road to the left lies Snow Lane where a works has been converted from old back to back houses.

Snow Lane former back to backs, long since workshops

In Doncaster Street stands “the last complete Cementation Furnace to survive in Britain” see photo below.

I think the notice board says it all, there’s an optional visit in the book over the road to Malinda Street so off I went across the tram tracks and was allowed in by the staff who showed me the courtyard and the new student facilities which have been created from the old building.  The building itself containing the crucible furnaces still stands (see photo below) but the building has been put to a more modern use as part of the University of Sheffield.

The yellow bands of fireproof bricks and ventilation holes visible at the top of the chimneys mark these out as former crucible furnaces no longer in use but listed and preserved as part of the history of Sheffield.

Another optional visit is to Well Meadow Works which is currently undergoing restoration and so off I went once again, keen as ever to gain an understanding of the steel history of the city.

In the photograph above may be clearly seen the yellow bands of fire-clay bricks and the ventilation holes for the individual flues of the crucible furnace at Well Meadow Drive.  Lower down the wall are the iron bands that secure the brickwork in place against the extreme heat. The book says “unfortunately it is very unsafe at present” (2008) but as you can see it is in undergoing restoration.

Opposite are the former houses or workshops associated with the furnace.

Work your way back down the hill parallel with the ring road and conscious of the University just up the hill as you cross the ring road near Shalesmoor tram stop along Dun Street to Green Lane where before you stands the (formerly) magnificent gateway to the Green Lane Works.

Sadly it’s seen better days and I don’t know where the bronze statues have got to but the grandeur is impressive and I hope it’s done up soon.

The whole area reminds me of the London Docklands in the early 1980s before the developers got their hands on the old warehouses and gentrified them.  Some former works have been converted but many remain in a state of semi-dereliction and I can only hope that the renovations are carried out in a sensitive manner.

I found out today this is a listed building.  That’s very good news.  But nothing on what’s to be done with it apart from letting it rot. “I’m afraid that Sheffield Archives does not hold information about any future plans for the archway as I believe decisions about restoration of a Grade II* listed building (which the archway is) would rest in the hands of the Planning Department”

The booklet goes on to talk about the works next door which are not sufficiently photogenic to include here and so instead “Go past Alfred Beckett’s Works and the Milestone Bar and Restaurant, towards the end of Green Lane” . . .

“On the way you will pass Wharncliffe Works”

Cast iron stove grates were made here. the building is now awaiting restoration and conversion to apartments.

Below is a photo of the whole building, somewhat compromised by my having to crop it to exclude unfortunately placed cars which would otherwise detract from the historic impression which I have managed to retain. Click the image below for the full picture.

At the end of Green Lane one is forcefully reminded of the modern world by the adjacent Shalesmoor ring road but hidden from it by the intervening wall and verge. In addition someone has thoughtfully relocated a stone plaque from a former works and made a feature of it in shielding the road.

This stands directly opposite the Globe Works

The Globe Works is, for me, the most interesting of the remaining works on the Furnace Trail for both its outward appearance and layout.

The Green Lane Works gets the prize for the most impressive gateway but the Globe wins hands down for the most extensive consisting of several courtyards and workshops with many remaining features from the period . . .

. . . in both the approach to the yard and inside the first courtyard itself have been laid grindstones among the cobbles to provide a hard surface and they make in addition an attractive feature.  If you click the image above it will take you to a larger image of many grindstones laid just outside the main house in front of the archway . . .

Click image to see the grindstones in the courtyard floor

“Retrace your steps to turn up Cornish Street. Half way up on the left the top of a dilapidated crucible stack peeps over a false wall. It belonged to the original Globe Works, and later the Cornish Works.

Crucible stack top above boundary wall in  Cornish Street – George Barnsley & Sons works

“The right side of Cornish Street is dominated by a great factory in brick.”  So says the guide.

Indeed it is and they’ve all been converted to flats now but the layout has been kept and the chimney still stands . . .

. . . so from the outside the appearance has not changed significantly though no doubt less grimy than in its heydey. The book says “Look high up. Can you see any wheels and drive shafts through some of the windows?”  I did and I could not but I have little doubt they have been left by the developers to add to the appeal of the flats and I have no complaints about that. After all it aids the sale and helps to preserve what would otherwise have left the site in a skip.

What I will add is that within the Kelham Island Museum is what to the modern eye looks to be a Health and Safety nightmare in the form of a C19th workshop complete with exposed rotating drive belts of all sizes and lengths driving machines of different kinds . . .

Apologies for the poor quality, this one was taken from video

. . .  among them a lathe and a hacksaw, which seem purpose built for crushing and chopping of digits and catching loose clothing.  Such were the lives of our ancestors.

In fact I was entranced because it is a reproduction of part of the workshops at James Dixon & Sons who made silverware in Cornish Street with much of the equipment in the museum taken directly from there.  The exhibition workshop is working and well worth a look.

“Carry on down Cornish Street. At the far end a footpath leads you to the River Don.”

“In 1864 Waterloo cottages were swept away by the Great Flood. The footpath became a short cut to Cornish Street. When new works were built on the left, the riverside section was realigned to overhang the water” – see above.

“Across Rutland Road is a 20th century brick building.” . . .

. . . “Why does it have a heart-and-hand symbol? The hand-and-heart symbol was the trademark of Samuel Osborn & Co. Ltd. Osborn’s was the first firm to specialise in the new alloy steels which made Sheffield famous in late Victorian times.”

“From here the trail starts back. Go over Neepsend Bridge and turn right.”

The remains of a crucible furnace stand in a small triangular plot beside the river that has been remodelled a number of times.

Click image for full details

I looked at historic images of this area from Google Earth and the area adjacent to the furnace park has lost industry to be replaced by riverside flats.

An excerpt from the information board at the site – click for full details

A short walk along the riverside past the flats will take you to the bridge and just to the left and across the road is the larger crucible furnace remains with the street name sign bolted to it.

The by now familiar yellow fire bricks in Ball Street

Walking across Ball Bridge you can’t help seeing the impressive Kelham Weir, originally constructed to divert water at river level to drive the water wheel referred to at the beginning of this piece.

Click the image above for a larger version of this photograph

This is a large weir and at the first sight of it I was taken straight back to Norrkoping in Sweden in 1989 when I was fortunate enough to have the chance to look around a former industrial city and came to understand that Norrkoping was the Manchester of Sweden.

The Brooklyn Works stand on the corner of Ball Street and Green Lane and like the Cornish Works are apartments converted from former steel works.  A short bridge is planned linking the works with Kelham Island thus saving what would otherwise be a long walk round from Ball Bridge to the museum.

At this point the walk has reached its conclusion so if you fancy a pint there’s the Fat Cat . . .  (see start of article)

. . . or the Kelham Island Tavern both close at hand.  I had a pint in both and they’re good pubs so enjoy your time on the Furnace Trail.