Blog City Sheffield Cutting Edge of Industry

Sheffield was a quiet market town for most of the 1,500 or so years of its history, renowned primarily for the fine quality of the knives and cutlery manufactured there. It was this cutting edge of knowledge and skills cultivated by the Sheffield cutlers that would form the seed of the town's rise to industrial prominence in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Sheffielders invented crucible steel, an improved process of making steel, and Sheffield Plate, a way to fuse thin sheets of steel to copper to make fine silverware. Henry Bessemer pioneered the process for making even better steel in Sheffield. In short order water-powered mills on the Rivers Sheaf and Don were churning out world-renowned steel and cutlery. The population grew rapidly from around 30,000 in 1800 to 500,000 by 1920. A vibrant city centre developed and impressive pieces of architecture were erected, like the Town Hall and Cutler's Hall. The distinctive culture of Sheffield began to form, which included the founding of the Sheffield Football Club in 1857, the oldest such club in the world. The hills that ring Sheffield acted as a geographic barrier to the city's further expansion and capped the city's population at around half a million people, while strengthening the roots that tied many of the city's inhabitants to their homes, moreso than is the case with most other English cities. Like every other corner of the United Kingdom, Sheffield was deeply affected by the World Wars. Tens of thousands of Sheffielders left the steel mills to fight and die in the trenches. In 1940 two nights of devastating German bombing gutted large parts of the city centre. Then after the 1973 Oil Crisis the heavy industry around Sheffield went into rapid decline. As the heavy industry melted away, taking thousands of jobs with it, many areas of the city began to decay. Urban blight became commonplace and the population even shrank. The movie The Full Monty chronicles the struggles of several laid off Sheffield steel workers who must resort to stripping to make ends meet. Recovery from this global economic realignment has been slow, but the city has indeed recovered. In the 1990s and 2000s the population grew again and even surpassed its previous highs, while the launch of ambitious development projects like Sheffield One have succeeded in regenerating the city centre. Sheffield is once again a booming city with a bright future. The Then photos are reproduced courtesy of the Picture Sheffield online archives. I took the Now photos in March 2015.

Then and Now Photos