Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet is an industrial

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make th ...

in the south of the

City of Sheffield The City of Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough in South Yorkshire, England. The metropolitan borough includes the administrative centre of Sheffield, the town of Stocksbridge and larger village of Chapeltown and part of the Peak Di ...

, England. The museum forms part of a former

steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistan ...

-working site on the

River Sheaf The River Sheaf in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, flows northwards, past Dore, through Abbeydale and north of Heeley. It then passes into a culvert, through which it flows under the centre of Sheffield before joining the River Don. T ...

, with a history going back to at least the 13th century. It consists of a number of

dwelling In law, a dwelling (also known as a residence or an abode) is a self-contained unit of accommodation used by one or more households as a home - such as a house, apartment, mobile home, houseboat, vehicle, or other "substantial" structure. The ...

s and

workshop Beginning with the Industrial Revolution era, a workshop may be a room, rooms or building which provides both the area and tools (or machinery) that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods. Workshops were the ...

s that were formerly the Abbeydale Works—a

scythe A scythe ( ) is an agriculture, agricultural hand tool for mowing grass or Harvest, harvesting Crop, crops. It is historically used to cut down or reaping, reap edible grain, grains, before the process of threshing. The scythe has been largely ...

-making plant that was in operation until the 1930s—and is a remarkably complete example of a 19th-century works. The works are atypical in that much of the production process was completed on the same site (in a similar manner to a modern

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. ...

). A more typical example of water-powered works in the area can be found at Shepherd Wheel. The site is a

scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and ...

, the works are

Grade I listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

and the workers' cottages,

counting house A counting house, or counting room, was traditionally an office in which the financial books of a business were kept. It was also the place that the business received appointments and correspondence relating to demands for payment. As the use of ...

, and manager's house are Grade II* listed.

History

Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet - Tilt Hammer - geograph

The site was used for

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in ...

forging Forging is a manufacturing process involving the shaping of metal using localized compressive forces. The blows are delivered with a hammer (often a power hammer) or a die. Forging is often classified according to the temperature at which ...

for 500 years, although there is evidence of other metal working before 1200. Its early history is intimately tied with the nearby

Beauchief Abbey Beauchief Abbey is a medieval monastic house now serving as a parish church in the southern suburbs of Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serv ...

, which operated a smithy (

blacksmith A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from other metals, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. tinsmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such as gates, gr ...

's shop) in the vicinity as well as number of mills along the River Sheaf. A 1725 map shows that the fields, subsequently flooded to provide the dam at the site, had been called "Sinder Hills", the cinders referring to the waste resulting from prior

lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cut, ...

smelting Smelting is a process of applying heat to ore, to extract a base metal. It is a form of extractive metallurgy. It is used to extract many metals from their ores, including silver, iron, copper, and other base metals. Smelting uses heat and a c ...

activities in the area in the 16th and early 17th centuries. However, the "Abbey Dale Works" as such, the buildings of which now form the Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, are first formally recorded in 1714 (though it may have derived directly from the "New Wheel" operated by Hugh Stephenson, as detailed in rent books from 1685). Development of the site continued with: *1777 enlargement of the dam *1785 construction of the tilt hammer *1793 construction of the workmen's cottages *1817 construction of the grinding hull *1838 construction of the manager's house *1840 construction of the coach house and stabling *1876 construction of the first storey warehouse (above the blacking shop). From the 17th century onwards, the site primarily operated as a scythe works until, in 1933, it was closed by Tyzak Sons and Turner (tenants since 1849). In 1935 it was bought by the Alderman J. G. Graves Trust, which donated the site to the city. The works was briefly reopened during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

to aid in Britain's

war effort In politics and military planning, a war effort is a coordinated mobilization of society's resources—both industrial and human—towards the support of a military force. Depending on the militarization of the culture, the relative si ...

. The Council for the Conservation of Sheffield Antiquities explored and initiated the restoration of Abbeydale Works in 1964. They discovered the remains of six buildings in addition to those still standing. These were identified from a 1924 map of the site as: *a "disused hardening shop" *a "disused open furnace shed" *a "lime and coke shed" *a "boiler house and chimney" *the "housing for the steam engine" *a "store for clay and anvils" Following the complete restoration the works were finally opened as a museum in 1970. Sheffield City Council closed the museum in 1997 as a cost-cutting measure. It was then leased to the Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust who reopened the museum in 1998.

The museum

Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet - Tilt Hammers - geograph

Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet is run as a working museum, with works and buildings dating from between 1714 and 1876. The museum demonstrates the process making blister steel from iron and coke, then refining this steel using techniques that originated with Benjamin Huntsman's invention of the

crucible steel Crucible steel is steel made by melting pig iron (cast iron), iron, and sometimes steel, often along with sand, glass, ashes, and other fluxes, in a crucible. In ancient times steel and iron were impossible to melt using charcoal or coal fires ...

process. The river provides

water power Hydropower (from el, ὕδωρ, "water"), also known as water power, is the use of falling or fast-running water to produce electricity or to power machines. This is achieved by converting the gravitational potential or kinetic energy of a ...

via a

water wheel A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or buckets ...

. There are several wheels on the site for driving a

tilt hammer A trip hammer, also known as a tilt hammer or helve hammer, is a massive powered hammer. Traditional uses of trip hammers include pounding, decorticating and polishing of grain in agriculture. In mining, trip hammers were used for crushing meta ...

, for the initial forging of the scythe

blade A blade is the portion of a tool, weapon, or machine with an edge that is designed to puncture, chop, slice or scrape surfaces or materials. Blades are typically made from materials that are harder than those they are to be used on. Histor ...

s; grinding

machine A machine is a physical system using power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to natural biological macromolecul ...

ry, which also has

steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporizatio ...

installed as backup for times of

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

, and a set of bellows. The blades were also hand forged for finishing. The museum is open Thursday to Sunday inclusive during peak season, and entry is free.

References

External links

Official website
{{coord, 53.333679, N, 1.512272, W, scale:1000_region:GB, display=title History of Sheffield Grade I listed buildings in Sheffield Grade I listed industrial buildings Grade II* listed buildings in Sheffield Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust Ironworks and steelworks in England Scheduled monuments in South Yorkshire Museums in Sheffield Industry museums in England Open-air museums in England Hamlets in South Yorkshire Power hammers Industrial archaeological sites in England

History

The museum

See also

References

External links