Workshop Ranges And Crucible Furnace Attached To Number 35

House and attached workshop ranges with crucible furnace on Well Meadow Street, Sheffield. Built circa 1840 and mid-19th century, with later 19th and 20th century additions and alterations. Brick construction with stone dressings and slate roofs.

The street front comprises a house to the right, with rendered rear and right return, two gable stacks, and wooden gutter and brackets. The house is two storeys with a three-window range. The first floor has a central plain sash window flanked by single boarded-up windows, all with stone lintels. Below is a central wooden pilastered doorcase with cornice and a door with overlight, flanked by single windows with keystone lintels, all now boarded up. The rear has a small 20th century casement and a larger boarded-up window to the right.

To the left stands a mid-19th century workshop block, three storeys high with a seven-window range and two gable stacks. The upper floors feature six 2-light casements and a larger 4-light casement to the right above the entrance, all under a continuous wooden lintel. Below are two boarded-up windows to the left and a cart opening with double board doors and wooden lintel to the right. The rear has similar fenestration with a 4-light casement to the left, an inserted 4-pane window, four 2-light casements, a half-glazed door with external wooden steps, and another 2-light casement. The second floor mirrors the front fenestration, with a cart opening below to the left and altered openings to the right, together with a small lean-to addition.

To the right stands a single-storey crucible furnace of late 19th century date, with a lean-to roof and a reduced rear wall featuring a crucible stack with six flues. The front has a central door with tall segment-headed overlight, flanked by single tall segment-headed windows with glazing bars. Steps descend to the firing cellar to the right. The street front is reinforced with firebrick bands and two segment-headed louvred ventilators.

The interior contains a vaulted cellar with six crucible holes and a coal chute from the street. To the right is a short return with a small 3-light window above and a larger segment-headed 3-light window below, followed by a slightly higher projecting range of two storeys forming the left side of the courtyard, with external steps to an off-centre door and altered openings below. The rear of the courtyard comprises mid-20th century single-storey buildings with part-glazed garage doors and an open bay used as a store.

The right side of the courtyard dates to circa 1840 and mid-19th century. It is two storeys with an eleven-window range and a single gable stack. Central brick and stone steps lead to a first-floor door with wooden jambs and a small fanlight. To its right are seven 2-light casements, and to the left are three similar casements followed by a large blocked window. Below is a narrow doorway beneath the steps, flanked to the left by three 2-light casements and to the right by a 3-light casement, then two further 2-light casements. A single-storey lean-to addition with a 4-panel door and 20th century window projects to the right.

These buildings represent the best surviving example of the small-scale integrated steel and cutlery works characteristic of the cutlery and edge tool trades that developed in the city centre in the early 19th century. The complex combined primary steel production in the crucible furnace with final product finishing in the adjacent workshops. The block on the right of the courtyard remains in use for scissors manufacture, whilst the remainder is presently disused and largely boarded up. Crucible steel making at this scale remained an economically significant means of producing high-quality tool steel and alloy steels, remaining relevant to industrial needs until the mid-20th century.