The approach to Sheffield from Lincolnshire is through a defile, and over a
long lofty viaduct, which affords a full view of the beautiful amphitheatre
of hills by which it is surrounded.
The town is situated in a valley, on five small streams--one the "Sheaf,"
giving the name of Sheffield, in the southern part of the West Riding of
Yorkshire, only six miles from Derbyshire.
The town is very ugly and gloomy; it is scarcely possible to say that there
is a single good street, or an imposing or interesting public
building,--shops, warehouses and factories, and mean houses run zigzagging up
and down the slopes of the tongues of land, or peninsulas, that extend into
the rivers, or rather streamlets, of the Porter, the Riveling, the Loxley,
the Sheaf, and the Don. Almost all the merchants and manufacturers reside in
the suburbs, in villas built of white stone on terraces commanding a lovely
prospect.
The picturesqueness, the wild solitude of the immediate neighbourhood of
Sheffield, amply compensates for the grimy gloom in which the useful and
disagreeable hardware trade is carried on. All around, except where the Don
opens a road to Doncaster, great hills girdle it in, some of which at their
summit spread out into heath-covered moorlands, where the blackcock used
lately to crow. Almost in sight of the columns of factory smoke, others of
the surrounding ridge are wood-crowned, and others saddlebacked and turfed;
so that a short walk transports you from the din of the workshop to the
solitude of "the eternal hills." We do not remember any manufacturing town
so fortunately placed in this respect as Sheffield. For an excellent and
truthful description of this scenery, we may turn to the poems of Ebenezer
Elliott, who painted from nature and knew how to paint in deep glowing
colours.
"Hallamshire, which is supposed by antiquarians to include the parish of
Sheffield, forms a district or liberty, the importance of which may be traced
back to even British times; but Sheffield makes its first appearance as a
town some time after the Conquest. In the Domesday Book the manor of
Sheffield appears as the land of Roger de Busk, the greater part held by him
of the Countess Judith, widow of Waltheof the Saxon. In the early part of
the reign of Henry I. it is found in the possession of the De Levetot family,
and the site of their baronial residence. They founded an hospital, called
St. Leonard's (suppressed in the reign of Henry VIII.), upon an eminence
still called Spital Hill, established a corn mill, and erected a bridge
there, still called the Lady's Bridge, from the chapel of the Blessed Lady of
the Bridge, which had previously stood near the spot; and their exertions and
protection fixed here the nucleus of a town. The male line of the Levetots
became extinct by the death of William de Levetot, leaving an infant
daughter, Maud, the ward of Henry II. His successor, Richard, gave her in
marriage to Gerard de Furnival, a young Norman knight, who by that alliance
acquired the lordship of Sheffield. There is a tradition that King John,
when in arms against his barons, visited Gerard de Furnival (who espoused his
cause), and remained for some time at his Castle of Sheffield.
"On the 12th of November, 1296, Edward I. granted to Lord Furnival a charter
to hold a market in Sheffield on Tuesday in every week, and a fair every year
about the period of Trinity Sunday. This fair is still held on Tuesday and
Wednesday after Trinity Sunday, and another on the 28th of November. The
same Lord Furnival granted a charter to the town, the provisions of which
were of great liberality and importance at that period, viz., that a fixed
annual payment should be substituted for the base, uncertain services by
which they had previously held their lands and tenements, that Courts Baron
should be held every three weeks for the administration of justice, and that
the inhabitants of Sheffield should be free from the exaction of toll
throughout the entire district of Hallamshire, whether they were vendors or
purchasers."
About this time Sheffield began to be famous for the manufacture of falchion
heads, arrows, files, and whittles. Chaucer tells us of the miller that
"A Sheffield thwytle bare he in his hose,
Round was his face, and camysed was his nose."
The ample water-power, the supply of iron ore close at hand, and in after
times, when its value for smelting was discovered, the fields of coal--all
helped Sheffield.
"Another only daughter, and another Maud, transferred by her marriage the
lordship of Sheffield to the more noble family of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.
William Lord Furnival died 12th April 1383, in his house in Holborn, where
now stands Furnival's Inn, leaving an only daughter, who married Sir Thomas
Nevil, and he in 1406 died, leaving an only daughter, Maud, who married John
Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. George, fourth Earl of Shrewsbury, built the
lodge, called Sheffield Manor, on an eminence a little distance from the
town, and there he received Cardinal Wolsey into his custody soon after his
apprehension. It was on his journey from Sheffield Manor up to London, in
order to attend his trial, that the Cardinal died at Leicester Abbey. In the
reign of Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, who had been committed to the
custody of George, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, after being confined in Tutbury
Castle, was removed in 1570 first to Sheffield Castle, and then to Sheffield
Manor House, where she spent fourteen years. It was for the alleged
intention of moving her hence that Thomas Duke of Norfolk, an ancestor of the
ducal family, still closely connected with Sheffield, suffered on the
scaffold. The grandson of this Duke of Norfolk, at whose trial the Earl of
Shrewsbury presided as High Steward, afterwards married the granddaughter of
the Earl, and thereby became possessed of this castle and estate." And now,
in 1851, another son of Norfolk is about to acquire a large fortune by a
Talbot.
During the reign of Elizabeth, the Duke of Alva, whose persecutions did more
for extending and improving the manufactures of this country than any amount
of parchment protection, drove over, in addition to the weavers of linen and
fullers of cloth, artizans in iron and steel. These, according to the wise
rule of settling all one craft in one spot, were by the advice of the Queen's
Chamberlain, the Earl of Shrewsbury, settled on his own estate at Sheffield,
and the neighbourhood thenceforward became known for the manufacture of
shears, sickles, knives of every kind, and scissors.
About this time (1613), according to a survey, Sheffield contained about 2207
inhabitants, of whom the most wealthy were "100 householders, which relieve
the others, but are poore artificers, not one of whom can keep a team on his
own land, and above ten have grounds of their own, which will keep a cow." In
1624, an act of the incorporation of cutlers was passed, entituled "An act
for the good order and government of the makers of sickles, shears, scissors,
and other cutlery wares in Hallamshire and parts near adjoining."
Gilbert, seventh Earl of Shrewsbury, the last of the male line of the house
of Talbot, who inherited the Hallamshire estates, died on the 8th May 1616,
leaving three daughters, co-heiresses. The Lady Alethea Talbot, the
youngest, married the Earl of Arundel, and the other two, dying without issue
in 1654, the whole estates descended to her grandson, Thomas Howard, Earl of
Arundel, who was restored to the title of Duke of Norfolk by Charles II., on
his restoration, and in that family a considerable property in Sheffield
remains to this day--not without narrow escapes of extinction. Charles James
Fox's friend, Jockey of Norfolk, was one of a family which seems to afford
every contrast of character in possession of the title.
In the great civil wars, Sheffield was the scene of more than one contest. In
1644, on the 1st August, after the battle of Marston Moor, the castle was
besieged by twelve thousand infantry dispatched by the Earl of Manchester,
compelled to surrender in a few days, and demolished by order of parliament.
The manor was dismantled in 1706 by order of Thomas Duke of Norfolk, and the
splendid park, shaven of its great trees, was converted into building land,
or accommodation land, part of which is still known by the name of the Park.
During the eighteenth century the Sheffield trade was entirely confined to
the home market, and chiefly conducted by pack horses. In 1751 a step toward
extension was made by the completion of works, which rendered the Don
navigable up to Tinsley. In 1819 the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal was
completed; and now Manchester, Leeds, Hull, and Liverpool, are all within a
morning's ride.
The art of silver-plating was invented at Sheffield by Thomas Bolsover, an
ingenious mechanic, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and
extensively applied by Mr. Joseph Hancock. This trade has been seriously
affected by the invention of electro-plating, which has transferred much of
the Sheffield trade to Birmingham. The invention of Britannia metal speedily
followed that of plating.
In 1750 a direct trade to the continent was opened by Mr. Thomas Broadbent.
The example was soon followed. The first stage-coach to London, started in
1760, and the first bank was opened in 1762.
At present the population can be little short of 120,000. The passing of the
Reform Bill gave to Sheffield two representatives. The constituency is one
of the most independent in the kingdom. No "Man in the Moon" has any room
for the exercise of his seductive faculties in Sheffield.
What is still more strange, until after the enactment of the Municipal
Corporation Bill, Sheffield had no local authorities. The Petty Sessions
business was discharged by county magistrates, and the Master Cutler acted as
a sort of master of the ceremonies on occasions of festivity, without any
real power. That honorary office is still retained, although Sheffield has
now its aldermen and common councillors.
There is a "Royal Free Grammar School" founded in 1649, with an income from
endowments of about 150 pounds a-year. Free to thirty boys, as regards
classics, subject to a charge of four guineas per annum for instruction in
the commercial department. In 1850 there were eighty-one scholars.
Manufactures.--Sheffield, through every change, has deservedly retained its
reputation for the manufacture of razors, surgical instruments, and the
highest class of cutlery, and a considerable number of carpenters' and other
steel tools.
In the coarser steel articles Birmingham does a considerable and increasing
business, and Sheffield workmen settling in Germany and in the United States
have, from time to time, alarmed their native town by the rivalry of their
pupils; nevertheless, it may confidently be asserted, that with its present
advantages Sheffield can never lose her pre-eminence in cutlery if her sons
are only true to her and themselves.
The steel consumed in England is manufactured chiefly from iron imported from
Sweden and Russia. It has not been exactly ascertained whence arises the
superiority of this iron for that purpose. But all foreign iron converted
into steel is composed of magnetic iron ore, smelted with charcoal. This
kind of ore is found in several countries, particularly in Spain. In New
Zealand, at New Plymouth it is said to be found in great quantities; but from
the two countries first mentioned we obtain a supply of from 12,000 to 15,000
tons, of which about 9000 come from Sweden. The celebrated mines of Danemora
produce the finest Swedish iron, and only a limited quantity is allowed to be
produced each year. All the steel-iron used in England is imported into
Hull. Bar-steel is manufactured by heating the iron, divided into lumps, in
pots, with layers of charcoal, closely covered over with sand and clay, for
several days. By this means the iron is carbonized and converted into what
is commonly called blistered steel. The heat is kept up a longer or shorter
time according to the hardness required.
Bar-steel, as it comes from the furnace, is divided and sorted, and the
pieces free from flaws and blisters are rolled out and converted into files,
knives, coach-springs, razors, and common implements, according to quality.
It will be seen that there is a good deal of science and judgment required to
manufacture the best steel.
Sheer steel is made from bar-steel by repeated heating, hammering, and
welding.
Cast steel, a very valuable invention, which has in a great degree superseded
sheer steel for many purposes, was first made in 1770 by Mr. Hunstman, at
Allercliff, near Sheffield. It is made by subjecting bar-steel, of a certain
degree of hardness, to an intense heat, for two or three hours, in a
crucible, and then casting it in ingots.
The Indian Wootz steel, of which such fine specimens were exhibited in the
Exhibition, and from which extraordinary sabres have been made, is cast
steel, but, from the rudeness of the process, rarely obtained perfect in any
quantity. Whenever we have the good fortune to intersect India with
railroads, steel-iron will be among the number of our enlarged imports.
The hard and elastic qualities of steel, known as "temper," are obtained by
heating and then cooling rapidly. For this purpose baths of mercury and of
boiling oil are used. Some waters are supposed to have peculiar virtues for
tempering steel.
Case-hardening, a process much used for tools and plough-shares, consists in
superficially hardening cast iron or wrought iron by heating it in a charcoal
crucible, and so converting it into steel.
The successful operations for converting steel into various kinds of
instruments, depends very much upon manual skill. The mechanics are united
in trades' unions of great power, and have exercised an influence over the
manufacturers of the town of a very injurious nature. At one period, the
razor-grinders and superior mechanics in several branches, were able to earn
as much as five and six, and even ten, pounds a-week. At that period, when
they had almost a monopoly of the cutlery trade, on a very trifling excuse
they would decide on taking a holiday, or, as it is termed, "playing."
Strikes for higher wages generally took place whenever any good orders from
foreign markets were known to have reached the town. By these arbitrary
proceedings, arising from an ignorance of the common principles of political
economy, which it is to be hoped that the spread of education will remove,
the Sheffield cutlery trade has been seriously injured. A few years ago
large numbers of the cutlers emigrated.
Further depression was produced by the rivalry of Birmingham in the
electrotype process, which has, to a considerable degree, superseded the
Sheffield plate and other trades, the latter town being better placed for the
foreign trade, while the workmen are less turbulent.
Beside cutlery and Sheffield plate, Britannia metal, and other similar
ornamental and domestic articles, a good deal of heavy ironware is made in
Sheffield. We may notice the fire-grates, stoves, and fenders, of which all
the best, wherever sold and whatever name and address they bear, come from
Sheffield. In this branch of manufacture a great deal of artistic taste has
been introduced, and many scientific improvements for distributing and
economizing heat.
The firm of Stuart and Smith, Roscoe Place, distinguished themselves at the
Great Exhibition, by producing a series of beautiful grates, at prices
between two pounds and one hundred guineas.
There are some establishments for the manufactory of machinery.
Within the last year or two Sheffield has enjoyed a revival of prosperity,
especially in the article of edge tools.
The mechanics of Sheffield are a very remarkable and interesting set of
people, with a more distinct character than the mechanics of those towns
which are recruited from various parts of the country. They are
"Sheffielders."
A public meeting at Sheffield is a very remarkable scene. The rules of
public business are perfectly understood and observed; unless in periods of
very great excitement, the most unpopular speaker will receive a fair
hearing. A fair hearing does not express it. The silence of a Sheffield
audience, the manner in which they drink in every word of a stranger,
carefully watching for the least symptom of humbug, and unreduced by the most
tempting claptrap, is something quite awful.
A man with a good coat on his back must dismiss all attempts at compliments,
all roundabout phrases, and plunge into the middle of the business with the
closest arguments he can muster, to produce any effect on the Sheffield
blades. Although they look on all gentlemen with the greatest distrust, and
have a most comical fear of imaginary emissaries from Government wandering to
and fro to seduce them, they thoroughly understand and practise fair play.
The sterling qualities of these men inspire one with respect, and regret that
they should be imposed upon by such "blageurs" as Feargus O'Connor and his
troop. Perhaps they are wiser now.
The Sheffielders, by way of relaxation, are fond of gardening, cricket, dog
fighting, and formerly of hunting. They are very skilful gardeners,--their
celery is famous. A few years ago, one of the trades hired land to employ
their unemployed members. Many possess freehold cottages.
Cricket and similar amusements have been encouraged by the circumstance that,
in summer droughts, the water-power on which the grindstones depend often
falls short, and then there is a fair reason for turning out to play or to
garden, as the case may be, according to taste.
Sheffield bulldogs used to be very famous, and there are still famous ones to
be found; but dog fighting, with drinking, is going out of fashion.
But, although other towns play at cricket, and love good gardening and good
dogs, we presume that the Sheffielders are the only set of mechanics in
Europe who ever kept their own pack of hounds. Such was the case a few years
ago, when we had the pleasure of seeing them; and, if they are still in
existence, they are worth going a hundred miles to see. The hounds, which
were old English harriers, slow and deep-mouthed, were quartered at various
cottages in the suburbs. On hunting mornings, when the men had a holiday,
the huntsman, who was paid by a general subscription, took his stand on a
particular hill top and blew his horn.
In a few minutes, from all quarters the hounds began to canter up to him, and
he blew and blew again until a full complement, some ten or twelve couples,
had arrived.
The subscribers came up in twos and threes on the hacks of the well known
"Shanks," armed with stout sticks; and then off they set, as gay and much
more in earnest than many dozen who sport pink and leathers outside on
hundred guinea nags.
Music is a good deal cultivated among all classes in Sheffield. There are
two scientific associations, but of no particular mark. Sheffield has
produced two poets of very different metal, James Montgomery and Ebenezer
Elliott, both genuine; and a sculptor, Chantrey, who was apprenticed there to
a wheelwright.
The railway communications of Sheffield were long imperfect,--they are now
excellent. The clothing districts of Yorkshire are united by two lines. The
North Midland connects it with Derbyshire, and affords a short road by Derby
and through Leicestershire to London on one side, and by Burton to Birmingham
on the other. The Lincolnshire line has shortened the distance to Hull,
whence the steel-iron comes, and fat cattle; the Manchester line carries away
the bars converted into cutlery, and all the plated ware and hardware, by
Liverpool, to customers in America, North or South.
We must not forget that there are coal-pits close to the town, of extensive
workings, which are extremely well suited for the visit of an amateur. Even
a courageous lady might, without inconvenience, travel underground along the
tramways in the trucks, if she did not mind the jolting.
The miners are not at all like our Staffordshire friends, but are very decent
fellows. There are a good many Wesleyan Methodists among them, and hymns may
be heard sometimes resounding along the vaulted galleries, and rising from
behind the air-doors, where children sit all day on duty,--dull work, but not
hard or cold.
A well managed coal mine is a very fine sight.