Categories
Places

“That’s not silver. It’s stainless steel, and it’s made in Sheffield.”

Savoy Theatre, alongside the Savoy Theatre, Strand, London

I had to make a hurried and brief visit to London. There is somebody you need to meet, said my friend. Come straightaway. The fact I heard this at 9am, and had only been asleep for four hours, made it an interesting journey. And so, hungover, I found myself waiting outside the world famous Savoy Hotel in The Strand. I would like to say the meeting was in the hotel, but it would take place in a nearby Costa Coffee.

I watched London rush by and looked up at the hotel entrance. “Fantastic engineering, isn’t it?” said a voice behind me. “It’s stainless steel,” said the member of staff. “Do you know they once found a dead body on top of the glass canopy?” I didn’t, and later found out it was true. In 1935, a down-and-out, one of the unemployed, exhausted, and defeated, had painfully climbed on to the shining stainless steel canopy over the entrance to the hotel to die of starvation.

And this got me thinking. Stainless steel. Was there a Sheffield connection? On my way home, I found out that there was.

“Isn’t it lovely?” exclaimed a girl gazing at the entrance to the adjacent Savoy Theatre. “Fancy a theatre front made of silver!” The year was 1931, and her boyfriend knew better. “That’s not silver. It’s stainless steel, and it’s made in Sheffield.”

But he was only partly right. The famous Sheffield product was not, strictly speaking, stainless steel, but a development of it – chromium nickel steel – which could be polished up to a degree that eclipsed the brilliance of polished silver and retained its sheen in any atmosphere.

‘Staybrite’ was a product of Thomas Firth and Sons, and in the 1920s and 1930s was making its mark in London. It was used for the imposing entrance to the Oxford Street Corner House, and combined with glass, there were the massive entrances to the Savoy Hotel and Savoy Taylor’s Guild, the beautiful rotating doors of the Strand Palace Hotel, and glittering turnstiles at the Olympia.

And there were examples abroad. Including the main entrance and ticket barriers of Geneva railway station, ornamental gates at Berne, and the doors of the Palais de Justice at Lausanne.

It was all manufactured in Sheffield.

Harry Brearley was the man credited with the invention of ‘rustless steel,’ but he left Brown Firth Laboratories in 1915 after a disagreement. It was his successor, Dr W.H. Hatfield who created the so-called “18/8” – Staybrite, still the most widely used alloy of this type.

The testing of it was rigorous. It was buried in a garden for six months and came up gleaming as new. It was attached to a vessel bound on a nine months’ voyage and dragged through the waves for that long period, hauled aboard, and found to be bright as polished silver.

Its use is ubiquitous now, but how did the Savoy Hotel come to get this Sheffield product? It was all about art-deco. A young architect, Howard Robertson, wrote to the hotel pitching for work, and in 1929 he revealed his most famous and prominent design – The Savoy’s iconic ‘Staybrite’ sign which runs the width of Savoy Court.

Sheffield-made ‘Staybrite’ canopy, and the figure of Count Peter of Savoy

©2022 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

Categories
Buildings

When Sheffield forced its way into Fleet Street’s golden age

A sketch of the 1901 Sheffield Telegraph building in London’s Fleet Street. The entrance was at the corner of Fleet Street and Fetter Lane. (Picture Sheffield)

Set in the floor, at the entrance to a narrow covered alley on Fleet Street, in the City of London, is a forgotten reminder that the Sheffield Daily Telegraph was once one of Britain’s leading provincial newspapers.

Fleet Street was the centre of Britain’s newspaper industry, and adjacent to Hen and Chicken Court, was the site of the Telegraph’s former London office. It moved here in the early 1890s, occupying a small building at its corner with Fetter Lane. However, in 1901, it was swept away by the Telegraph’s owners, W. C. Leng and Co, and replaced with a piece of Sheffield.

A busy newspaper street. 1906: Fleet Street looking towards Ludgate Hill and St. Paul’s Cathedral. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

180-181 Fleet Street was designed by Sheffield architects Gibbs and Flockton, and used as offices for the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, the Weekly Telegraph, the Yorkshire Evening Star and Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph, and other newspapers and publications belonging to the company.

The site was held on a long lease from the Drapers’ Company, with a 20ft frontage on Fleet Street, and 131ft in Fetter Lane.

The Sheffield Telegraph, 180-181 Fleet Street, London offices of the Sheffield Telegraph, in 1897. (Picture Sheffield)
May 1901. Demolition of the Sheffield Telegraph offices in Fleet Street to make way for the new Gibbs and Flockton building. (British Newspaper Archive)
A rare glimpse of the Sheffield Telegraph building on the right. Although the address was Fleet Street, it had six ground floor shops on Fetter Lane. The buildings to its left survive.

There were six floors, including the basement and roof storey, built with cast-iron standards and steel girders. The ground floor in Fetter Lane was divided into six sale shops, and each of the floors into thirteen offices. The front of the building was faced with creamy white Carrara faience, supplied by Doulton and Co.

It was here that the newspaper rented a private telegraph wire from the Post Office, the first provincial publication to do so. It connected Fleet Street with its head office in High Street allowing 400 words a minute to be transmitted. The wire ran underground to Birmingham then onwards to Sheffield using telegraph poles. It meant that Sheffield was only five minutes behind London when it came to getting the latest news stories.

In 1925, the newspapers were bought by Allied Newspapers, the building sold, and the offices relocated to 136 Fleet Street.

A floor plaque, at the entrance to Hen and Chicken Court, is the only reminder that the Sheffield Daily Telegraph once had adjacent offices.

Surprisingly, very few photographs exist of the Gibbs and Flockton offices, and it was replaced by a modern office block in 1983.

Newspapers were once big business, but no more.

The building was replaced by this modern office block in 1983 and is still known as 180 Fleet Street. Note that old buildings survive to the left. (Buildington)

© 2021 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.