Sterling Works

Sterling Works

A manufactory complex on Arundel Street in Sheffield, originally built around 1850 as an edge tool works and later adapted for manufacturing silver and silver plated goods. The building was empty at the time of inspection in December 2003.

The complex evolved as a courtyard plan with incremental development around and within a rear courtyard. It is built of red brick with stone dressings and slate roof coverings, and underwent significant alterations and additions during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The frontage to Arundel Street comprises a three-storey, eight-bay range rising from a shallow ashlar plinth with a painted finish. An off-centre vehicle entrance sits at the right-hand end, featuring a moulded and keyed shallow arch. To its right is a doorway to a gate office with a semi-circular overlight. The ground floor window openings are two-over-two pane sashes beneath flat gauged brick heads. At bay five is an altered doorway, formerly with a rectangular overlight but now fitted with 20th-century joinery. To its left stands a wide semi-circular arch-headed opening with keyblock. Further left are an infilled doorway and window opening. The first floor has eight windows with gauged brick semi-circular arched heads, four retaining original sash frames. An upper floor cill band is punctuated by fourteen small rectangular workshop windows, six with sash frames. A two-bay return to the left-hand end has matching windows to both first and second floors.

The rear courtyard is enclosed on its south-west side by a long three-storey range extending from the return to the frontage range; this range predates the frontage. A lower two-bay range links the frontage range and the earlier courtyard range, with slightly different floor levels. This connecting range features numerous windows to the first and second floors in varying patterns, mostly with renewed joinery. The courtyard elevation has closely spaced window openings with multi-pane frames on stone cills; openings to the upper floors have segmentally-arched heads. This range returns on Eyre Lane at three-storey height, though the remaining parts of the elevation were remodelled at two and three-storey levels in the 20th century. The right-hand side of the courtyard range comprises a two-storey monopitch-roofed workshop range with an access stairway to the upper floor workshops and tall arched window openings to the ground floor. Roof cowls mark the positions of former hearths serving the workshops. The centre of the courtyard is occupied by a two-storeyed workshop range added in the mid-20th century, linked by a footbridge to the rear of the frontage range.

The interiors have been subject to ongoing alteration but generally retain the open-plan character of 19th-century workshops. Few surviving workshop fixtures remain, though the right-hand range retains some brick jack-arch ceilings, typically associated in Sheffield works with engine locations or grinding workshops.

The works appear on the 1850 Ordnance Survey plan of Sheffield with the courtyard ranges and rear range, but without the Arundel Street frontage. The frontage is shown on the 1889 plan alongside buildings added to the courtyard centre. The Goad Fire Insurance plan of 1896 identifies the works as a "Tool Factory and Powered Works", with the frontage range as a steel warehouse, the two-storeyed courtyard range as forge shops with brick-arched floors, and a gas engine located in the three-storeyed courtyard range.

The building forms a group with the attached Butchers Wheel. It represents a near-complete example of a Sheffield edge tool manufactory that developed between 1850 and the early 20th century through incremental additions, retaining elements from all stages of its development. It possesses strong group value with other significant 19th-century works complexes in this city centre location, collectively characterising the distinctive industrial landscape created in 19th-century Sheffield by the city's metal trades during their period of international significance.