It’s remarkable that this 1968 Italian comedy, directed by Mario Monicelli, was partly filmed in Sheffield. The Girl with the Pistol, or La Ragazza Con La Pistola, received an Oscar nomination for best foreign film as well as receiving critical praise.
It starred Monica Viti, Carlo Giuffre, Stanley Baker, Corin Redgrave and Anthony Booth (Tony Blair’s father-in-law).
Photograph by Rare Film
The wry comedy finds the beautiful Assunta (Monica Vitti) being kidnapped by Vincento (Carlo Giuffre) and taken to his remote home in the country. He plans to “dishonour her” and by doing so, win her hand in marriage.
In a twist of events, she becomes too domineering and Vincenzo flees, but she resolutely travels to Edinburgh, Sheffield, Bath, and London seeking revenge, but finds an Englishman more to her liking.
Photograph by AvaxHome
According to British Women’s Cinema (by Melanie Bell and Melanie Williams), “Assunta continues her journey of revenge to Sheffield. A bus ride, highlighting the English landscape takes her there. On a street, she encounters a young man, John (Anthony Booth) who, she notices ‘has Italian shoes’, and she enlists him in her quest for vengeance.”
Scenes in Sheffield were shot at Granville Street, one scene overlooking Sheaf Street and Ponds Forge Works, Park Hill, Neepsend, Manor Lane, Attercliffe and at Steel, Peach & Tozer’s factory, Templeborough, in Rotherham.
According to one fanzine, “La Ragazza con la Pistola may have been nominated for an Academy Award, but is mainly interesting for Monica Vitti prancing around Edinburgh and Sheffield.”
The film was supported by a slightly psychedelic soundtrack by Peppino de Luca.
This might seem an unusual post, but in March 1939 the people of Sheffield were getting quite excited about a new breakfast cereal.
“Now – a FOOD gives CONSTIPATION victims permanent relief,” announced The Star. “Not a drug, not a medicine, this crisp new breakfast cereal is welcomed by thousands who have tried countless remedies in vain.”
And so, what was this exciting new miracle cereal?
“Doctors today recommend Kellogg’s All-Bran as the one safe way to relieve constipation. They know that this crisp, delicious breakfast food contains just the ‘bulk’ that is necessary to make your bowels move naturally, regularly and normally.”
If truth be known, this cardboard-like cereal was launched in the United States by William Keith Kellogg in 1916, the company’s third product after Corn Flakes and Bran Flakes. It was invented by W.K. Kellogg’s son, John L. Kellogg, who added malt favouring to bran cereal, but who was forced out of the company in 1925.
Photograph by The British Newspaper Archive
W.K. Kellogg was a tough operator, and once wrote that “Highly seasoned [meats], stimulating sauces… and dainty titbits in endless variety irritate [the] nerves and… react upon the sexual organs.” He wrote as much about the dangers of sex and masturbation as he did about healthy living. Cereal was the bridge; the dietetic remedy to keep diets from leading them to sin.
All-Bran, along with Corn Flakes, had been imported to the UK, since 1922, prompting the company to appoint the industry’s first dietician in 1923. The Kellogg’s Company of Great Britain opened at Holborn, London, in 1914.
The claim from 1939 that All-Bran was a “new” breakfast cereal probably relates to the fact that Kellogg’s had opened its first British factory at Trafford Park, Manchester, in May 1938, geared up to produce Corn Flakes, All-Bran and Rice Krispies.
It provided a constant supply of breakfast cereals across the UK for the first time, but the start of World War Two, and the introduction of rationing, curtailed its development, with Kellogg’s products only sold in the midlands, north of England and Scotland.
All-Bran peaked in the 1970s, but its market share declined from 1986 onwards, partly due to an increase in supermarket own-brand imitations, but mainly from the increase in sales of Bran Flakes and Fruit ‘n’ Fibre.
It’s hard to believe that the oldest part of The Benjamin Huntsman, on Cambridge Street, dates to 1879. Look closely, and you’ll notice that this is built with a cast iron frame, quite unique for its day, but responsible for saving the structure of the building on more than one occasion.
The Benjamin Huntsman has a lot of history, and had J.D. Wetherspoon not chosen to name it after one of Sheffield’s famous steel sons, there were plenty of other options available.
Strange as it might seem, very little has been written about the building, its past seemingly ignored.
It was originally built for William Wilson and Son, coachbuilders and harness makers, forced to move from its old premises at Moorhead due to road improvements. The golden age of the horse and carriage came to an end at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it was no surprise that the company soon turned its attention towards the motor car.
Image by The British Newspaper Archive
By the time it went into voluntary liquidation in 1924 the company was well-known in Sheffield as a car dealer and motor engineer.
It was next occupied by Quinton, Arthur and Co, ironmongers, trading from the ground floor with the Cambridge Billiard Club (proprietor Ernest Leonard Searle) opening on the floor above in 1925.
Image by The British Newspaper Archive
Quinton Arthur’s tenure was short-lived due to a serious fire in 1926, an event that caused its demise a few months later.
In 1927, the premises were rebuilt around the iron framework, advertised as a large sales shop and basement, including Cambridge Chambers, a suite of offices alongside the Cambridge Billiard Hall.
Image by The British Newspaper Archive
By 1929, the ground floor was occupied by R. Bamber and Company, a Southport-based firm of coachbuilders established in 1893, which had also started selling motor cars. Along with premises in Leeds, it moved into Cambridge Street selling “shop-soiled used cars,” and was soon advertising itself as the “Northern Motor Olympia.”
R. Bamber remained here until 1929 until handing over the premises to the Handsworth Motor Company, with a garage at the rear for forty cars.
Photograph by Picture Sheffield
It was a brief existence and very soon the building was purchased by J. Gilder, a company that came to prominence in Sheffield.
Jack Gilder’s grandfather began selling and servicing cars as far back as 1912, his grandson setting up a new company in 1938. Jack went off to fight in World War Two and it was while in Belgium that he came across a car which changed the company’s fortunes.
The business was relaunched with a Rootes franchise in 1946, but it was Jack’s obsession with the design and engineering of the Volkswagen Beetle that made him approach the German manufacturer with a view to selling them.
It was a courageous move for Jack to sell a German product so soon after the war, and it was from this building that J. Gilder sold the first ever Volkswagen Beetle in Britain and became VW’s first UK dealership.
Gilder’s remained on Cambridge Street before moving to Banner Cross in the 1960s, and is now part of JCT600, a West Yorkshire-based motor group.
While changes went on below, it’s worth mentioning the Cambridge Billiard Hall that subsequently became Faulkeners and remained until the 1980s. By this time, it was long past its best, fondly remembered for its “bad flooring, rubbish on the floor, poor lighting, cigarette smoke and freezing cold temperatures.”
Photograph by Picture Sheffield
The former car showroom became the Nameless Restaurant between 1979-1985, before becoming a takeaway. In 1987, a fire in the restaurant destroyed the whole of the building, including the old billiard hall, paving the way for J.D. Wetherspoon to rebuild it, once again using the iron frame, incorporating The Benjamin Huntsman (opened 1999) with an adjacent new build.
Looking through dusty old archives can sometimes divulge the most unexpected stories. Take this account from July 1950, in which a newspaper revealed that a new Sheffield-made car was being built specifically for export to America.
The car was the Fairley Convertible, a five-seater family car, made by James Fairley and Sons, one of Sheffield’s oldest steel firms, on Bramall Lane.
It was designed by R.W. Phillips, known to everyone as Reg, a Monte Carlo rally driver, the firm’s general manager, and built by only five people aiming to construct one car a week.
The car was based on the Austin Seven and powered by a Jowett-Javelin engine. With a chassis made of tubular Sheffield steel, and with an aluminium body, the car weighed only 18½ cwt, made to provide a good power-weight ratio for economy and high performance.
Carrying five people, it had a top speed of 80 m.p.h. and did more than 32 miles per gallon.
“We have aimed at a high performance, small horse-power car, which can be easily handled in busy streets and parked quickly,” said Reg Phillips.
A motoring correspondent was able to give the prototype of the Fairley Convertible a test drive around Sheffield.
“At the rush hour period between five and six p.m. it slipped easily through traffic between The Moor and Abbeydale Road to Dore, and only rarely was it necessary to use third gear.
“It has four gears, with steering column change lever, which are expected to give speeds of: Second, 40 m.p.h.; third, 60 m.p.h.; top, 80 m.p.h.
“Pale blue, it has a Continental-style radiator grill and, in latest fashion, a chromium plated rubbing strip on each side of the body.
“For easy access to the flat-four engine, the whole bonnet can be lifted from the front by one hand.”
Unfortunately, despite the fanfare, the odds were stacked against the car. Priced at £850 (about £26,875 now), the Fairley Convertible was displayed for the first time at Aston’s of Coventry in January 1951.
In fact, the project never materialised and only one prototype was built, but it did get the steel industry concerned as to whether aluminium might take over from steel for car bodywork
Reg Phillips fared better. Born in 1915, he was passionate about cars and earned a reputation as a rally driver, often co-driving with Raymond Baxter (better known as a presenter on Tomorrow’s World) after they’d met at Silverstone in the late fifties. Phillips went on to become chairman of James Fairley and Sons, whose head office was in Birmingham.
It’s sad, that in the 21st century, we refer to Benjamin Huntsman as the purveyor of cheap beer and a night out in Sheffield city centre. It’s equally sad that our only lasting memorial to Benjamin Huntsman is this J.D. Wetherspoon pub on Cambridge Street (aside from the sculpture in Meadowhall, and a block named after him at the Northern General Hospital).
However, Benjamin Huntsman invented a process that gave Sheffield pre-eminence in the production of finished steel and led to the growth of an industry that the city will always be famous for.
Benjamin Huntsman was born in Lincolnshire in 1704. His parents were of German extraction, settling in this country a few years before he was born.
His ingenious mind allowed him to become an expert at repairing clocks, and eventually set up business in Doncaster as a clock maker and mender. Described as being “shrewd, observant, thoughtful and practical,” he was regarded as the “wise man” of the neighbourhood.
His work, however, was hindered by inferior metal supplied from common German steel, material supplied for the springs and pendulums of his clocks.
These circumstances made him turn his attention to making a better kind of steel, his first experiments conducted at Doncaster, but as fuel was difficult to be had, he removed to Sheffield in 1740.
Huntsman settled at Handsworth, then a few miles south of the town, and he pursued his investigations in secret. The task was massive, not only to discover the fuel and flux suitable for the purpose, but to create a furnace that could sustain a heat more intense than had ever been known.
Huntsman’s cottage at Handsworth. Image by The British Newspaper Archive
His experiments lasted years, and it was only after his death that the numerous failures were brought to light, in the shape of many hundredweights of steel, found buried in the earth around his factory.
Benjamin Huntsman sculpture at Meadowhall. Photograph by Budby
At last his perseverance was rewarded, and his invention perfected. The melting was conducted in fire-clay pots, or crucibles, placed in a coke melting-furnace (at temperatures of 1,600°c/2,900°f), high enough to permit the melting of steel for the first time.
After he had perfected the process, Huntsman realised that the new metal might be used for other purposes, other than clock springs and pendulums. He canvased Sheffield’s tools and cutlery trade, but they obstinately refused to work a material much harder than that which they had been accustomed to use.
Foiled in his endeavours to sell steel at home, Huntsman turned his attention to foreign markets, and soon found he could readily sell abroad.
The honour of employing cast-steel for general purposes, belonged to the French, who quickly appreciated the advantages, and for a time the whole of Huntsman’s production was exported to France.
It was only after that Sheffield’s cutlers became alarmed at the reputation cast-steel was acquiring abroad, and formed a deputation to wait upon Sir George Savile, one of the members for the county of York, to use his influence with the Government and prohibit the export of cast-steel.
When Savile found out that Sheffield manufacturers wouldn’t make use of the new steel he positively declined to comply with their request.
Looking back, it was fortunate for Sheffield that he didn’t.
Huntsman had already received favourable offers from Birmingham to relocate his furnaces there, and had he done so, the Sheffield steel industry might never have grown as it did.
Benjamin Huntsman sculpture at Meadowhall. Photograph by Farzeed Rehman
The Sheffield makers eventually realised that they would have to use cast-steel if they were to compete with cutlery from France. And then began the efforts of the Sheffield men to wrest his secret from him.
Because Huntsman hadn’t taken a patent out on the process, his only protection was secrecy.
All his workmen were pledged to silence, strangers carefully excluded from the works, and the whole of the steel melted in the night.
However, it is said that the person who first succeeded in copying Huntsman’s process was an iron founder named Walker who carried on business at Grenoside.
Walker adopted the “ruse” of disguising himself as a tramp, feigned great distress and abject poverty, and appeared shivering at the door of Huntsman’s foundry late one night, asking for admission to warm himself by the furnace fire.
The workmen took pity on him, and they permitted him to enter.
Within months, Walker was also making cast-steel, and others quickly followed, but the demand for Huntsman’s steel steadily increased, and in 1770, he moved to a large factory at Worksop Road, Attercliiffe.
He died in 1776, aged 72, and was buried in the churchyard at Attercliffe. His son, William Huntsman (1733-1809) took over the business and it grew into one of Sheffield’s biggest steel firms, before being swallowed up by larger competitors in the mid-20th century.
“I have been with Maxons since the 1950s, when I was taken on to be the face of Maxons, and except for a brief kidnapping in the 1980s, I have been at the factory on Bradbury Street with my friends the Pitchforks, and all those who look after me at Maxons.”
These words taken from the Mint Rock King’s facebook page, a clever marketing ploy by Maxons, the Sheffield sweet firm, manufacturers of Dixons famous Mint Rock.
Photograph by Maxons
The story of Maxons is a steady if not low-key account.
We must go back to 1885 when Henry Dixon (1861-1949) started making sweets and toffees. His father was Fanshaw Dixon, a silversmith by trade and a mover in the cause for Liberalism in Sheffield. Henry started as a wholesale manufacturing confectioner, establishing the business at Britannia Confectionery Works on Love Street.
Photograph of Britannia Confectionery Works by Maxons
Henry was one of the founders and twice president of the Sheffield Confectioners’ Association, as well as being involved with the British Federation of Wholesale Confectioners, of which he was twice president also.
Like many Victorians, he was a man of religious means, being a member of Queen Street Congregational Church, a Sunday School worker, and lay preacher. He was also an ardent Band of Hope and temperance worker and became president of the Sheffield Congregational Association.
Photograph of Henry Dixon by Maxons
In 1896, Henry created Dixon’s Superior Mint Rock sold in tins, later adding Butter Scotch and Walnut Toffee. The business passed to his son, Henry Dixon Jr, who continued production at Love Street, and while their advertising was always low key, Dixon’s Mint Rock became a favourite with Sheffielders.
Photograph by The British Newspaper Archive
In 1927, W.E. and L. MacDonald, also started in the confectionery business, calling themselves Maxons (Mac and Son). The manufacture of their products, predominantly toffee, gave way to boiled sweets including Yorkshire Mixture, Pear Drops and Winter Mixture.
Production took place in the high altitude of Bents Green, at “Glengarry” (No. 52) on Muskoka Drive, the building standing in a garden, with products sold across the city as well as in its own shop, at 24 Ecclesall Road.
Photograph of Maxons ‘garden’ factory by The British Newspaper Archive
Ralph Pitchfork was born in 1913, the son of a Sheffield newsagent, who, on leaving school in 1931, when employment was scarce following the great depression, managed to gain employment with one of his father’s suppliers – Maxons.
He remained with them until 1950, when he purchased another local wholesale and manufacturing confectioner in Sheffield, trading as Ralph Pitchfork Ltd. with the manufacturing arm trading as Maxons Ltd.
Photograph by The British Newspaper Archive
Following the end of sweet rationing in 1953, both the wholesale and manufacturing companies began to expand and, in 1958, Ralph Pitchfork merged his two companies with those of Henry Dixon Ltd, after Henry Dixon Jr chose to sell because he had no male heir to take over from him.
The merger created a substantial wholesale company that traded under the name of Dixon Pitchfork Ltd. The enlarged Maxons included not only the Maxons branded range, but also added the Dixon’s range to its portfolio of products – these included the regional favourites; Mint Rock, Cherry Balsams and Buttermints.
Photograph by Picture Sheffield
In the 1960s the registered name of Jesmona Black Bullets was acquired from John W. Welch of Whitley Bay, and production moved to Sheffield.
Jesmona Old Fashioned Black Bullets, its name coming from the Jesmond district of Newcastle, were reputed to have originally been made using moulds for musket-balls. This dark-brown peppermint-flavoured sweet (made with sugar, glucose and peppermint oil), was as popular in the north-east, well-liked by miners and shipyard workers, as Dixon’s Mint Rock was to the steelworkers in Sheffield.
Interestingly, John Welch’s grand-daughter is Denise Welch, the actress, who says she was nicknamed Truly Scrumptious at school because of her sweet-making family.
Photograph by Maxons
The wholesale company of Dixon Pitchfork Ltd. was sold in the late 1960s and eventually, like many privately owned wholesale confectioners lost its identity to one of the national groups.
Maxons continued as a privately owned, independent, manufacturing company under the direction of Ralph’s son – Roger Pitchfork, and now by his grandsons – Chris and Richard Pitchfork.
Maxons is the main brand used to produce old fashioned sweet jars, retail bags, Sherpots, Headsplitters (responsible for a 20 per cent leap in turnover in 2018), Stupidly Sours and bulk products. All Dixons-branded sweets are traditionally made by hand using recipes handed down from 1885, its Mint Rock still made from cream of tartare rather than glucose.
The company has also re-introduced the Charles Butler brand, using recipes dating back to 1848, to create a hand crafted Victorian-style boiled sweet.
Photograph by Maxons
As well as Jesmona Black Bullets, the company is well-known for its traditional Yorkshire Mixture, consisting of fruit and mint flavoured sweets, thought to originate from the early 1800s in industrial cities. Sweet vendors went from factory to factory selling a small mixture of the sweet factory’s production from the previous day, whatever was left.
In 2017, Yorkshire Mixture was the subject of a fascinating court case, when Maxons and West Yorkshire based Joseph Dobson went head to head for the rights to the Yorkshire Mixture name. In a case costing £15,000 over eighteen months, eventually going to the European Intellectual Property Office, Maxons was given the go-ahead to continue producing the sweets under the Yorkshire Mixture brand – after Dobson’s tried to claim exclusive rights to use the name.
In May 1942, the minutes of the Sheffield Town Trust recorded the following: – “Railings around the Botanical Gardens have been requisitioned by the Ministry of Works and Buildings – approximately 300 yards – bought originally at a cost of £877.”
Considering that £877 is worth about £41,600 today, and that the railings had probably been erected during Victorian times, it was an inconvenience that the Town Trust fought and lost.
This occurrence happened all over the country during World War Two, suggested by Lord Beaverbrook (in charge of aircraft production) to Winston Churchill, intended to make people think they were contributing to the defence of Britain following the catastrophe at Dunkirk.
“They took away our railings. Men came and cut the ornamental railings from the copings on the little walls outside of the houses, along the whole length of the road, they were taken away to be melted down to make weapons.”
Photograph by London Parks and Gardens Trust
The action, ordered as part of Regulation 50 of the Defence (General) Regulations 1939, left stumps of old railings in our walls, and if you look carefully around Sheffield, evidence can still be seen outside many private houses.
In 1950, the Sheffield Daily Telegraph said that “a generation is growing up which does not remember the iron fences and gates which adorned, in some instances, and gave a prison appearance in others, to our homes and public buildings.”
During the war, the willing public went along with the scheme, taking solace that old iron railings would be put to good use. However, if the truth had been known, their enthusiasm to co-operate might have been less agreeable.
In recent times, John Farr, a correspondent, reckons that only 26 per cent of ironwork was used for munitions, and that by 1944 much of it was rusting in council depots, quarries or railway sidings, with some filtering through to the post-war metal industry.
It started out as a conspiracy theory and turned out to be true.
By September 1944, over one million tons of ironwork had been collected, far more than was needed. Faced with an oversupply, the Government allowed the programme to continue, if only to save face.
Ironwork was stockpiled away and even after the war, when raw materials were in short supply, the widely held view was that the Government quietly disposed of it and even buried it in landfill or at sea.
Photograph by Garton & King Ltd
Of course, any evidence conveniently disappeared, with records of this wartime effort destroyed, and leaving some unlikely explanations as to what happened to this iron hoard.
Towards the end of the war, when munitions were running out, it is suggested that bombers flying over France were loaded with pieces of cut-down railings which were dropped on the enemy.
Another rumour suggests that ironwork was used as ballast for ships in West Africa, and that today houses in ports across Ghana and Nigeria can be found with smart Victorian railings.
In London, there are eye-witness accounts of barges dumping ironwork into the Thames Estuary, to which it remains, but we do know for certain that up until the 1980s there were scrapyards around Britain still piled high with the stuff.
And so, it makes you wonder what happened to those expensive iron railings from outside the Botanical Gardens. Perhaps they adorn the outside of a respectable house in Lagos.
Botanical Gardens. Photograph by Google Street View
Here’s a building we regularly pass and never give it a second glance. This is the NHS Central Health Clinic at the corner of Norfolk Street and Mulberry Street, a structure that has seen better days.
However, most of us will be unaware that this building once had a very different function.
It was built in 1865 for Pawson and Brailsford, once a famous high-class printing firm in Sheffield.
We’ve featured Pawson and Brailsford before, in connection with Parade Chambers, built in 1883-1885 (and still standing) on High Street, near to the Church Gates (now Sheffield Cathedral).
The company was founded in 1855 by Henry Pawson and Joseph Brailsford, both former newspaper men. Pawson had joined the reporting staff of the Leeds Intelligencer, moving to the Sheffield Mercury and later becoming editor of the Sheffield Times. Brailsford had been associated with the Sheffield Independent.
The two opened their first printing and stationary shop at Britannia Printing Works on Castle Street, later moving to these new premises on Mulberry Street.
Also called Britannia Printing Works, the new manufacturing facility was designed by Frith Brothers and Jenkinson, architects, of East Parade.
However, the construction of the Britannia Printing Works wasn’t without its problems and subject of an interesting court case.
Photograph by Picture Sheffield
In March 1865, Pawson and Brailsford bought property in Mulberry Street, to the junction of Norfolk Street. Opposite were the new building of the Sheffield Club, and the Mulberry Tavern, an ancient public house. In July, the company proceeded to pull down part of the property, consisting of old workshops, about 24ft in height, occupied by Rhodes and Beardshaw, silver-platers, and a shop at the corner of Norfolk Street, occupied by Mr Shaw, tailor.
The new offices for Pawson and Brailsford extended to four-storeys high, about 50ft, and were set back 5ft, allowing for road widening at the Norfolk Street end of Mulberry Street.
Building work started in the first week of July and continued until 14 November when Pawson and Brailsford received a letter from Mr Unwin, a solicitor, threatening to apply for an injunction from the Court of Chancery to stop construction work.
The letter was sent on behalf of Mrs Senior, owner of the Mulberry Tavern, who claimed £500 in damages due to loss of light caused by the new building, and the devaluation of her property.
Failing to obtain a satisfactory response from the owners, the claim was filed on the 5 December, by which time the building had reached its full height, and before it went to a hearing on 21 December, the building was ready for its roof. The case wasn’t argued, but Pawson and Brailsford were ordered to progress carefully, with an intimation that if work proceeded it would be at their own risk.
Attempts were made to settle the case, but Mrs Senior adhered to her demands for £500, although at one stage had indicated she might be willing to settle for £250.
Pawson and Brailsford maintained that they hadn’t harmed the value of the Mulberry Tavern but had enhanced it instead. They offered to pay Mrs Senior £1,000 for the public house, a £200 profit on what her late husband had paid for it and offered to guarantee her possession by giving her a lease. However, she declined to sell for not less than £1,300.
Photograph by Picture Sheffield
The case stood over until November 1866 when it came up for hearing before Vice-Chancellor Sir Page Wood.
Mrs Senior claimed that she was compelled to light up the Mulberry Tavern with gas during the daytime, a claim refuted by Pawson and Brailsford. According to her testimony, the sunshine only came on her property ten minutes a day as against 7-8 hours before. She also provided several witnesses, including George Lawton, a corn miller, and Mr R. Bunby, corn dealer, both providing convincing evidence that it “was no longer possible to see samples of corn,” when conducting business inside the inn.
Mulberry Tavern. Demolished in the 1960s. Photograph by Picture Sheffield
In the end, Sir Page Wood said there was no answer to say, as the defendants did, that the plaintiff’s property was increased in value by their building, and that she was entitled to all the additional value given to her property by recent improvements in the town. It was clear from the evidence that she had suffered material damage from interference with the ancient light.
However, considering that Mrs Senior had been given notice in April of what Pawson and Brailsford intended, Sir Page pointed out that it had taken her until December, when the new building was nearly completed, to make a claim, and that there was no case for the building to be pulled down.
Sir Page ordered that Pawson and Brailsford pay compensation, decided by the Chief Clerk, and to pay costs of the suit and the inquiry.
Pawson and Brailsford, on finding that a decision wouldn’t be made straightaway, now offered to give Mrs Senior £1,300 for the Mulberry Tavern, the figure she had originally suggested, and a lease on the property. She now, however, refused to sell, and would accept no settlement except payment of damages.
The company offered Mrs Senior £250 in damages, and she demanded £300, but ultimately the settlement was made at £275.
Photograph by Picture Sheffield
With peace restored, Pawson and Brailsford completed the building and when business increased the property was considerably enlarged in 1870, taking the top stories of offices at the corner of Norfolk Street, together with rooms at the top of Alliance Chambers.
The ground floor was used as paper stores, warehouse, packing room and counting house. On the first floor, letterpress printing and wood engraving were undertaken, with lithographic printing and copper plate engraving carried out on the second floor. The top storey was used for book-binding and storage of completed work, with machinery used for rolling, cutting, paging, blocking and ruling.
The basement was occupied by Mr Favell, wine merchant, along with a portion containing steam engines and boilers to work the machinery throughout the building.
The Britannia Printing Works looks less grand than the day it was built, particularly the roof space, probably the result of a series of unfortunate fires.
Shortly after completion, a fire started when a workman thrust a lit pipe into a drawer to avoid being found smoking. And in 1881, a significant fire destroyed the upper floor, and caused considerable damage to floors below. Another blaze, in 1903, caused even greater destruction, once again obliterating the top floor, as well as destroying the roof.
Photograph by the British Newspaper Archive
Rebuilt on each occasion, Pawson and Brailsford refurbished the building in 1930, transferring the stationary department from its High Street premises and creating “a new and commodious showroom and sales shop.”
The new shop had entrances from Norfolk Street and Mulberry Street, both allowing access into “beautifully fitted” departments.
“Since the days when a spike file and an old ledger, a stool and an old-fashioned desk were the principal furniture of a counting house, there has been a wonderful development in office equipment. Desks, filing and card index cabinets, steel furniture, loose-leaf and account books, ruled sheets and forms, safes, cash boxes, calculators, commercial, legal, technical and Government publications, form a few of the items stocked.”
Pawson and Brailsford also made a speciality of drawing office materials, and architects and surveyors were able to source all kinds of instruments, and the motorist wasn’t forgotten either, agents by special appointment for Government Ordnance Survey Maps.
Photograph by Picture Sheffield
By the 1960s, the building had transferred to another Sheffield institution, Wilks Brothers and Company, ironmongers, founded in 1744, who remained until 1972.
In March 1974, approval was granted to the Maternity and Child Welfare Centre for the rental of the Wilks Building as replacement premises for ones at Orchard Place (now the site of Orchard Square).
The building was converted, including the removal of shop windows on Norfolk Street and obliterating all traces of its previous history.
The NHS facility opened in April 1974, known as the Central Health Clinic, offering advice on contraception, pregnancy, sexual health and sexuality. It is now used as a health centre.
Sheffield City Council have rejected plans to turn a Grade II-listed building into apartments, but only on the basis that they would not provide enough affordable housing.
The planning application refers to 375-385 Glossop Road, a red-brick building built in the 1840s as a terrace of six town houses, three-storeys high, with a basement.
For younger people, the building was better known as Hanrahan’s, an American-style bar, and more recently as Loch Fyne Restaurant.
Sheffield developer Primesite UK, working closely with architects Cartwright Pickard and CODA, wanted to invest £4million in transforming the building into 27 one, two and three-bed apartments. A three storey rear extension would also have been created with a glass link atrium connecting a brick residential block to the rear of the building.
Photograph by Primesite
However, Conservation groups were concerned. The Georgian Group said that “This scheme had the potential to rob this terrace of much of its surviving architectural and historic interest and to cause harm to the surrounding conservation area.”
The Conservation Advisory Group called it a “gross overdevelopment” and said the 1840s character at the front, particularly the door surrounds, would have been harmed.
And the Hallamshire Historic Buildings group said: “Proposed aluminium cladding is a hideous disfigurement of the splendid Glossop Road elevation.”
The University of Sheffield was also concerned about the impact on activities at Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience and Barber House, which has delicate microscopy and imaging equipment, and also said that neighbouring properties on Glossop Road and Ruth Square would have been overshadowed.
Subject to planning consent, the conversion was due to start this year, but councillors refused the plans because the scheme did not provide enough affordable housing.
Photograph by Primesite
Back in the 1790s, this area was open fields, later owned by Phillip Gell who inherited the Broomhill estate in 1805 as a descendant of the Jessop family. He wanted to remain at Hopton, Derbyshire, and sold the land which was divided into building plots.
The land was bought by Peter Spurr who leased large parts of the estate for building, with this property constructed in the 1840s, and becoming home to several doctors, nurses, dentists, solicitors and teachers as well as those people associated with Sheffield’s trades. In 1899, part of the building became a private school operated by Eliza Depledge, the Sheffield Thorough Grounding School.
By 1951, the houses had been converted into flats, with three flats in each apartment, but the property fell into decline through the sixties and seventies.
In the early 1980s, the building was converted into a restaurant, knocked through to make one large ground floor and first floor, and opening as Hanrahan’s in 1984. It underwent several refurbishments in 1992, 1998-1999 (costing £500,000) and again in 2001.
It eventually closed and reopened as Casa before reverting to Hanrahan’s again in 2004. The Loch Fyne Restaurant opened in 2008 and closed in February 2016, after which the building has stood empty.
The Hanrahan’s site is just one of three prominent Sheffield sites being developed by Primesite.
The company is also redeveloping the former Wake Smith offices on Clarkehouse Road and the former Gilders VW car showroom at the junction of Ecclesall Road, Ecclesall Road South and Psalter Lane.
Together, the three projects have a development value of £12million.
There might be a brighter future for Leah’s Yard, on Cambridge Street. For many years the former Little Mesters’ workshops have been cloaked with scaffolding, a desperate attempt to stop the Victorian frontage falling down.
But now, Sheffield City Council, and its development partner for the Heart of the City II project, Queensbury, have submitted a planning application for Leah’s Yard.
The council bought the building in 2015, almost ten years after the site had been sold to a development company (presumably as part of the ill-fated Sevenstone project), and over thirty years since it had last been used.
This latest planning application seeks permission to undertake fundamental construction works to make the building structurally sound and bring it back into usable condition. It includes the installation of one replacement shop front and another new one.
Photograph by David Poole
The project team has also revealed that it will be inviting bids from interested organisations wishing to occupy and manage the spaces towards the end of March.
Despite its Grade II*-listing, Leah’s Yard has been on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register, slowly decaying and crying out for development.
Leah’s Yard fronts onto Cambridge Street, a carriage archway leads into a small courtyard surrounded by two and three-storey brick workshops.
Barely one room deep, the workshops have external wooden staircases to give access to the upper floors with its casement windows, needed to provide natural light to the workbenches behind.
It’s hard to believe that many of these former workshops still contain traces of past existence, including some of the old workbenches.
Cambridge Street, once known as Coal Pit Lane, was traditionally one of the centres of the bone and horn-working trades in Sheffield.
Photograph by Picture Sheffield
Leah’s Yard dates between 1850-1890, once home to six companies, including four cutlers, a horn and bone merchant and a silver-plater.
Henry Hobson later traded on the site, and in the 1890s it was solely occupied by Henry Leah, a manufacturer of die stamps for silverware, and for which the site gets its name.
By 1922, eighteen companies were working from Leah’s Yard, with Henry Leah eventually merging with Spear & Jackson in 1976.
Its last occupant was a shop on the front lower floor, and when this closed the site fell into gradual degeneration, and subject to fire damage.
The Heart of the City II team wants Leah’s Yard to become ‘a cultural heart and social anchor’ to the £470million scheme.
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