SHEFFIELD STEEL.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 17983, 29 January 1924, Page 10

SHEFFIELD STEEL.

HISTORY OF ITS REPUTATION. When Sheffield held its Cutlers' Feast on October 25th, remarks the London "Daily Telegraph," it was celebrating one of the oldest of local tiade marks.- The name of Sheffield is known all round the world as a warranty. Other of oar manufacturing towns, perhaps, may claim for their goods an equal renown. But how many of them had established their repute when .Chaucer's pilgrims rode to Canterbury? Of the miller of Trumpington it is recorded by the reeve that "A Sheffield thwitel baar he in his hose." In the fourteenth century the wares of the cutlers of Sheffield were already sought by all knowing men. We are not bound to believe as some traditions tell, that they were at work when the Romans ruled, but certainly iron was smelted thereabouts in Norman times. That Bichard Crookback was beaten at Bosworth was, doubtless, due to the excellence of the arrows supplied by Sheffield . to Richmond's archers. In the days of Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was lord °f the' manor, presented a case of "Hallamshire whittles" to Lord Burleigh. The whittle and the thwitel are, of course, "one and the same, a large knife. It is said that the craft of the Sheffield artisans was improved by the teaching of Flemish refugees, who had been'' driven from their' homes by the persecution of Alva. The smiths of Flanders were of ancient fame. There was certainly a great advance in skill in the seventeenth century. The Cutlers' Company was established in 1624. In less than a century Sheffield was supplying not" only whittles, but tho most delicate surgical knives and all manner of steel work. Thore is no need to continue the story. Everyone knows that the expansion of industry in the last two centuries brought to Sheffield tho manufacture of heavy steel on a scale undreamed of by the early cutlers. What is too often forgotten is the long evolution of the local craft. We speak of the industrial revolution as though the centralisation and localisation of trades in towns, this place making steel goods, that woollen, the other leather, were an invention of yesterday. But some of these localisations are almost as old as tho English nation. It is easy to understand how Sheffield came to be a cutlers' town. Ironstone was abundant, hard by there were woods to smelt it with, and when the wood began to fail Sheffield folk, more fortunate than the old Sussex ironmasters, found coal under their feet. In the. days before the steam engine, five rivers provided water-power. "Then, now, and always," mountains of mill-stone grit were ready to furnish grindstones. But we shall be wise if we give credit also to tha inherited experience and skill of many generations. Acquired qualities of mind may or may not be heritable, but it is certain that craftsmen do not suddenly arise out of a district with no industrial traditions. The place our nation has taken as one of the great manufacturing communities of the world has been won not only by advantages of situation and resources but by centuries of training.