IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Mowbray Street, SHEFFIELD, S3 8EN

The gentleman in the window is making handles for cutlery. The building looks over the River Don to Kelham Island and has accommodated "little mesters" for a hundred and fifty years. A "little mester" is a self-employed craftsman working in industries associated with steel products including cutlery.

The gentleman in the picture is a self-employed "little mester", specialising in production of hand-crafted handles for cutlery. His historical workshop looks over the River Don to Kelham Island

Bricked up facade of the Mowbray Street Steel Works which were registered under the name John Nicholson and Sons, makers of springknives, table knives and razors between 1847 and 1953. The company became part of the Neepsend Steel and Tool Corporation whose head office was about a quarter of a mile away http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1301873 .

Looking upstream from Kelham Island.

With reclaimed industrial buildings turned into flats. Looking downstream.

The building on the left is the Sheffield Industrial Museum and the angled pipe up it side in the distance is the exhaust from the 12,000 horsepower River Don rolling mill engine. Pestilential Buddleia is growing on the river bed (one of the top 4 invasive weeds - Himalayan Balsam, Japanese Knotweed, Giant Hogweed and Buddleia).

This was the first technique for bulk steel production and was superseded by the basically similar BOS process. The last Bessemer converters were at Workington and were blown out in 1974. This is one of those and is outside Sheffield Industrial Museum at Kelham Island. This has some impressive exhibits and is worth a visit for the most powerful surviving steam engine in the UK (12,000 horsepower).

A huge engine, driven by high pressure steam, built by Davy Brothers Ltd in 1905 and used to power rolling mills for making steel sheet for battleships, nuclear power stations and oil rigs. It was in use for 75 years, and was reinstalled at the Kelham Island Museum in 1983, after being saved by Hugh Wentworth Ping, who worked for Firth Vickers and then British Steel and was responsible for raising the scrap value of £20000. It weighs 426 tonnes, produces 12000 BHP, can change direction in 2 seconds, and makes lot of noise when running.

This rare survival of a mid-C19th back-to-back makes for rather a pathetic sight. Grade II listed. Most of its contemporaries were cleared in the 1930s.