On your right, Truro Works looks modest enough... but this Grade Two listed building carried one of Sheffield’s quieter revolutions. In the late eighteen forties, Joseph Cutts set it up for silver plate and Britannia metal, an alloy of tin, antimony, and copper. It took silver plating beautifully, which meant ordinary working families could afford tableware with a bit of shine instead of aristocratic price tags. Sensible, really... and very Sheffield.
This was a hybrid works, making both cutlery and the silver-plated wares that often get overlooked. Around seventeen forty-three, Thomas Boulsover pioneered Old Sheffield Plate, bonding silver to copper. By the eighteen forties, electroplating onto nickel silver took over. Truro Works made both. The buffers and electroplaters carved on the Town Hall frieze worked in rooms behind windows like these.
From eighteen fifty-six, Atkin Brothers, a cutlery firm, took over and stayed into the nineteen fifties. And like Butcher Works and Eye Witness, this place mixed factory rooms with rented workshops for Little Mesters, the self-employed makers under one roof.
Now walk through to Arundel Street, where Butcher Works has a long cutlery facade... then continue on toward Beehive Works.
