Stand here and look along that Arundel Street front: four storeys, about one hundred and thirty feet wide, and not exactly begging for compliments. Butcher Works grew into this stern face in stages. William Butcher began here on Eyre Lane in eighteen nineteen, bought three plots by eighteen twenty-two, and set up a crucible steel furnace. Then came a bigger block around eighteen thirty-five, and in the eighteen sixties and seventies two more four-storey ranges closed in a central courtyard, with a tall chimney tied to the wall by a curving sweep of brick.
Inside, the Butchers turned out almost everything with an edge: plane irons stamped “W. Butcher, warranted cast steel,” files and razors that won a Prize Medal in eighteen fifty-one, saws, machetes, cutlasses, pocket knives, scissors, even Bowie knives for the U-S market. By the eighteen fifties, about five hundred people worked through this business.
Now for the real Sheffield trick. The Little Mesters and the sub-contracting system kept places like this humming. A Little Mester was a skilled self-employed craft worker who rented a bench or grinding trough, did one specialist job, got paid by the piece, and passed the work on. Sheffield’s river power and tightly packed workshops made that scattered system thrive.
Up above sat the grinding hulls - shared grinding rooms - with brick arches up to a meter thick to carry the machinery. In one preserved hull, as many as thirty men and boys worked in poor light, deafening noise, choking dust, and the constant risk of a grindstone exploding. That dust caused grinders’ asthma; in eighteen nineteen, fewer than thirty-five of Sheffield’s two thousand five hundred grinders reached fifty.
A one point two million pound Heritage Lottery grant helped restore the works, which reopened in two thousand and seven with homes and Academy of Makers workshops. It gained Grade Two Star status in two thousand and nine, and the courtyard is publicly accessible most days. When you’re ready, continue to Truro Works on Matilda Street, about three minutes away. We’ll come to Eye Witness Works later, and it’s the longest cutlery facade you will see today.
