Crucible Steel Shop In South Corner Of Sandersons Kaysers Darnall Works

A crucible steel making shop, built in 1871 for Sanderson Brothers within the Sanderson Kayser's Darnall Works. The building is constructed of brick with stone dressings and has a Welsh slate roof to the north-east and asbestos cement to the south-west. It features rebated eaves and coped gables with inturned kneelers.

The exterior is single-storey and comprises six internal bays. Round-headed openings with stone sills are present for unglazed windows. The south-east elevation, facing the yard, includes a tall central doorway with an unglazed fanlight, flanked by two windows and then by single tall doorways. Above, six truncated crucible stacks, each with four flues, are visible. The right gable has three windows, the central one larger and partly boarded up, with a tall central doorway flanked by smaller windows below. The left gable, partly obscured by adjoining crucible shops, shows the top of a round-arched opening. The rear elevation has blocked openings.

The interior features a strutted queen post timber roof with king posts above the collars. There are sets of six melting holes arranged in groups of four on either side. Notably, the crucible stacks are set back from the external walls, creating a passageway behind them; iron brackets on these stacks were used to hold shelves for drying and storing crucibles. Remains of the furnace and flues are still visible in the south-west corner. The crucible cellars are currently inaccessible.

The Darnall Works site initially developed in 1835, and this building was added in 1871-2 at a cost of approximately £6,000. The shop operated for about 50 years and was briefly reopened during the Second World War before closing permanently in 1943. The building was designed on a large scale to accommodate the continuous teeming method casting of large articles, despite the relatively small quantity of steel produced by each crucible. The Darnall Works was one of many large-scale crucible steel works that existed in Sheffield, and it is now the last surviving example in Britain.