Kangaroo Works will honour the site it stands on

The scheme comprises 364 dwellings with a mix of 1, 2 and 3 bedroom apartments, which will be built and operated under the Build to Rent (BtR) Sector model. Commercial space will be provided at ground floor levels, providing active frontages to Rockingham and Wellington Streets. Image: Whittam Cox Architects

Next year, people will start moving into a new residential complex in Sheffield City Centre. When they do, the occupants of Kangaroo Works, a 364 apartment development, will have one of the oddest postal addresses in the city.

Designed by Whittam Cox Architects, with construction underway by Henry Boot, Kangaroo Works is the latest building in Sheffield’s Heart of the City II development. The building, with frontages to Rockingham and Wellington Streets, is designed around the vernacular Sheffield courtyard plan, and provides a stepped roofscape, responding to the sloping typology of the site and forming a transition between the formal city centre and more historic Devonshire Quarter.

The block has a peak of 14 storeys whilst a unique brick façade, taking inspiration from Sheffield’s urban heritage, supports the Masterplan palette and industrial heritage of the original Kangaroo Works site, which the development now stands on.

Kangaroo Works was home to Robert Sorby and Sons, makers of edge tools, later becoming a merchant and steel maker, that had set up on Union Street in 1828 and then moved to Carver Street in 1837.

About 1896 it moved a short distance to this site at the corner of Trafalgar and Wellington Streets.

Former premises of Robert Sorby and Son Ltd, edge tool manufacturer, No. 44 Wellington Street, (his trade mark was a kangaroo so was referred to as the Kangaroo Works) with the Fire Station, Wellington Street in the background. Image from 2006 by David Bocking/SLAI/Picture Sheffield

Their products included adzes, axes, augers, edge tools, joiners’ tools, saws, scythes, hooks, sheep shears and crucible steel. The company sought markets worldwide, and the Kangaroo brand, which was used until the 1980s, was adopted to emphasise the company’s interest in Australia.

*Former premises of Robert Sorby and Sons, edge tool manufacturer, No. 44 Wellington Street. Image from 2006 by David Bocking/SLAI/Picture Sheffield*

Robert Sorby and Sons was acquired by Hattersley and Davidson in 1923, and vacated Kangaroo Works in 1934 to share a site on Chesterfield Road. It still survives in premises on Athol Road at Woodseats.

The former Kangaroo Works became dilapidated and converted for multi-use, and remained so until demolition in 2008, after which it was used as a car-park.

*Former Kangaroo Works gateway. Image: The Glasgow Gallivanter*

But what happened to the famous stone-carved Kangaroo trademark that once stood over the gateway on Wellington Street?

It was rescued and re-erected at Kelham Island Museum, slightly shorter in height so that it would fit into the restored Russell Works building that houses the Ken Hawley Collection of tools, cutlery and silversmithing made in Sheffield.

And so, the name lives on, and Kangaroo Works will occupy pride of place overlooking Pound’s Park, the new urban green space also under construction.

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