The Darnall Works is a former steelworks in the

Darnall Darnall is a suburb of eastern Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Darnall is approximately east-north-east of Sheffield city centre. History Darnall was initially a small hamlet usually included with Attercliffe. William Walker, a resident ...

area of

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire a ...

in England. The only remaining large complex of crucible furnaces, the works opened in the 1835 and were frequently extended and adapted until the late 20th century. Some of the structures at the works are

listed buildings 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 Irel ...

, at Grade II* and Grade II, and part of the site is a

Scheduled Ancient 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 d ...

Establishment

Naylor and Sanderson was established in 1776 as a cutlery- and steel-manufacturing business in the

Attercliffe Attercliffe is an industrial suburb of northeast Sheffield, England on the south bank of the River Don. The suburb falls in the Darnall ward of Sheffield City Council. History The name Attercliffe can be traced back as far as an entry i ...

area of Sheffield. By the 1820s, it had grown into a large concern, focused on producing steel, and based at works on West Street near the city centre. Naylor retired, enabling four members of the Sanderson family to take control and rename the firm as "Sanderson Brothers". Over the next couple of decades, they took on various sites in the city to house their growing concern, and in 1835 they took over a large site on the edge of the hamlet of Darnall.K. C. Barraclough, ''Steelmaking Before Bessemer, Vol. 1'', pp.104–106Two Hundred Years of Special Steel
, Sanderson Special Steels Limited The site was already in industrial use, as the Don Glass Works, which

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

believe were probably already established in 1793, centred on a glass cone. The Sanderson Brothers were able to acquire the site on a 21-year

lease A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the user (referred to as the ''lessee'') to pay the owner (referred to as the ''lessor'') for the use of an asset. Property, buildings and vehicles are common assets that are leased. Industrial ...

for £13/13/0 annual rent. As part of this, it appears that they took over the glassworks, where possible learning technological advances in one industry to develop the other, and perhaps adapting the glass cone into a cementation furnace. Both cementation and crucible furnaces were definitely in use, but the glassworks was sold off during the 1850s to Melling, Carr and Co, who operated it until the start of the 20th century. Although the glassworks then closed, and there are no above-ground remains, English Heritage consider it likely that there are significant underground structures, along with discarded glass, and this forms part of the justification for the listing of the site as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

Expansion

Darnall Works - South East Crucible Steel Shops

The establishment was successful and, in 1871, Sandersons decided to concentrate production at the Darnall site. To increase capacity, the firm constructed several new buildings in 1871 and 1872, and these are the oldest surviving structures on the site. Cementation furnaces had fallen out of favour, and the new buildings instead contained 180 crucible furnaces.Ruth Harman and John Minnis, ''Pevsner Architectural Guide: Sheffield'', p.200 Two abutting ranges of steel shops survive, both single-storey, in brick with asbestos cement, roofed partly in slate and partly in corrugated asbestos. The south-east range provided 84 holes for steel manufacture, while the south range had 24, designed to allow the casting of big objects using the "continuous teeming" method of production; a further west range was similar to the south range, giving a total of 132 melting holes. The south range alone cost £6000 to construct, and it remained in use for around fifty years, briefly resuming production 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 ...

. The two ranges are Grade II* listed and form the core of the Scheduled Ancient Monument. At the same time, ancillary structures were added, including a two-storey office building, lodge, weighbridge and boundary walls. Constructed in brick, these all survive and are Grade II listed, and also form part of the Scheduled Ancient Monument. In 1873 and 1874, a further range of crucible furnaces was added, powered by a Siemens gas furnace, with its own gas plant adjoining. This was one of the first in the city, giving the same capacity as sixty traditional crucible furnaces.

Kayser Ellison works and merger

Darnall Works - North Steel Working Shop

In 1912, Kayser, Ellison and Co. decided to establish a new steelworks, using

electric arc furnace An electric arc furnace (EAF) is a furnace that heats material by means of an electric arc. Industrial arc furnaces range in size from small units of approximately one-tonne capacity (used in foundries for producing cast iron products) up to ...

s, and adjoining the existing Darnall Works. Completed the following year, it included two large buildings: a two-storey heat treatment workshop and a three-storey steel working shop. In each, a steel frame is infilled with brick, glass and concrete, and the roofs are of corrugate iron. This form of construction was then novel, and this contributes to the listing of each at Grade II. In 1934, Sandersons transferred their works to Kayser Ellison, combining the two sites to form a new, larger Darnall Works. Sandersons had finally stopped using their cementation furnaces in the 1920s, and Kayser Ellison soon demolished these, along with the west range of crucible steel shops from the 1870s. Darnall Works - Main Building

Kayser Ellison merged with Sandersons in 1960, forming Sanderson Kayser. A new main building was completed in 1967, incorporating a former stock warehouse, and measuring in plan and more than high, with a further 200-foot-long bay containing the new heat treatment workshop. This building contained several large furnaces, using butane in a first for the city. This allowed many buildings to be put to new uses: the south-east crucible shops as stores, the heat treatment workshop as a stock grinding plant, and the steel working shop as an annealing and cleaning plant. The gas-fired crucible furnaces and the gas plant were demolished, but English Heritage believe that substantial remains of these exist below ground. By the end of the 20th century, Sanderson Kayser had concentrated production on its nearby Newhall Road site, and left the Darnall Works disused.

Restoration

Although the site became largely derelict, most of the buildings survived, and it was established that these included the only remaining large complex of crucible furnaces, and the only known remains in the United Kingdom of gas fired crucible furnaces. Interest in the buildings grew after they were featured in a 2001

publication, ''One Great Workshop''. This argued that Sheffield's metalworking heritage could help regenerate areas of the city.£300,000 Sheffield grant to save historical workshop
, '' The Star'', 9 January 2010 A plan to restore the listed buildings and construct new warehouses on the remainder of the site, enabling the return of steelmaking to the area, was announced in 2006. However, the scheme required local residents to relocate, and it did not proceed.Massimiliano Mollona, ''Made in Sheffield: An Ethnography of Industrial Work and Politics'', p.88 Instead, by 2010, £800,000 was raised to restore the Grade II* buildings at the site: the south-east and south crucible workshops; repairing their roofs and enabling reuse of the structures.

References

External links