Don Cutlery Works

Don Cutlery Works

A purpose-built cutlery works constructed in several phases from the mid to late 19th century, located on Doncaster Street in Sheffield. The complex is built in red brick, part-rendered, with some stone dressings and slate roofs topped with brick gable and eaves stacks.

The complex has a distinctive U-shaped plan with a courtyard and lower buildings forming a partial fourth side towards the rear, developed incrementally over time. The street frontage consists of two adjoining buildings. The right-hand (south-east) building is of earlier construction, three storeys tall and nine bays wide, with a double-pitched roof and gable stacks. Its rendered front contains two wall-tie ends and segmental-headed windows on the ground floor with stone sills (all now boarded up), and nine windows to the first and second floors. The second-floor windows are shorter with straight heads and timber casements, most now unglazed or boarded up.

The left-hand (north-west) building is three storeys but notably taller than its neighbour, five bays wide, with parallel double-pitched roofs and two gable stacks. At the junction between the two buildings sits a covered cart entrance with a depressed segmental-arched head, stone base blocks, and a decorative rendered surround with a cornice carried on console brackets. The ground floor contains three partially blocked straight-headed windows (now boarded up). The first and second floors have five windows each with continuous stone sill bands and segmental-arched heads with plate glass hung-sashes.

The south-east side range is narrow in plan, probably three storeys high, with a blind exterior wall and mono-pitch roof. Facing into the courtyard are two individual hand forges on the ground floor, each with a doorway and window within a single segmental-arched opening. The north-west range is four storeys tall with a double-pitched roof and five eaves stacks to the courtyard elevation (one now truncated). The rear range was probably rebuilt in the early 20th century as a single-storey workshop extending towards the street frontage range, with brickwork at the gable apex suggesting possible louvred ventilation.

The street frontage ranges probably contained offices, warehousing and workshops, while the side and rear ranges housed workshops for various cutlery manufacturing processes. The south-east range retained individual hand forges on the ground floor, and possibly the north-west range as well. An 1998 survey of the courtyard elevations noted the two forges, four yard elevation stacks to the north-west range, and equipment including a hydraulic press, electric motor and line shafting to the rebuilt workshop.

The complex was occupied from around 1860 until at least 1910 by Southern and Richardson, merchants and manufacturers of cutlery. A trade directory from around 1880 lists them as manufacturers of table knives, silver-plated cutlery, dessert knives, cooks' knives, pen knives, pocket knives, razors and scissors.

The works survives largely intact and unaltered, exemplifying the typical mid-to-late 19th-century Sheffield cutlery works layout. The form and arrangement of buildings clearly express Sheffield's regional specialism in metal working and manufacturing, which made the city renowned throughout the world as a centre of excellence in steel production and processing. Don Cutlery Works has significant group value with Doncaster's Cementation Furnace (a Scheduled Monument) located on the opposite side of the road.