19l;5] on Recent Advances in Scientific Steel Metallurgy 603 



In 17G0, Horace Walpole, writing to George Montague, remarks, 

 " I passed through Sheffield, which is one of the foulest towns in 

 England in the most charming situation. There are two-and-twentj 

 thousand inhabitants making knives and scissors. They remit eleven 

 thousand pounds a week to London. One man there has discovered 

 the art of plating copper with silver. I bought a pair of candlesticks 

 for two guineas, that are quite pretty." 



Antiquarians express the opinion that the remarkable concentra- 

 tion of the cutting steel industry round Sheffield was due to the 

 juxtaposition of coal and iron ore in the district. This reason, how- 

 ever, is quite unconvincing to metallurgists, first, because charcoal 

 and not coal was used, and, second, because the local ore produces 

 an iron high in phosphorus from which it is practically impossible to 

 make cutting implements of fine steel. There is little doubt that the 

 main factor which originally determined the location of the chief 

 British steel industry at Sheffield was the unique situation of the 

 town in a hollow near the confluence of four rivulets into the Don. 

 Along these streams running down the valleys of the Sheaf, the 

 Porter, the Rivelin and the Locksley, the old Sheffield steel-workers 

 could, by the construction of numerous dams, get water power for 

 their forging hammers and grinding wheels at a small cost, and water 

 wheels worked by some of these dams are still in operation along 

 these valleys, and that of the Don itself actuating tilt-hammers and 

 grindstones.* The latter are made from the carboniferous sand- 

 stones of the district. There is proof positive that the basis metal, 

 consisting of nearly pure iron, from which the best Sheffield cutting 

 steels are still made, was being imported into the town in the six- 

 teenth century from abroad. 



The slide on the screen reproduces entries abstracted from the 

 accounts of The Sheffield Church Burgesses for the year 1557. 



" Paid to Eobert More for one stone and quarter of Danske 

 Yron XXIId. 

 Paid to ye same Robt. for X lib of Spanysche Yron XV." 



In modern money the cost of this raw material works out to at 

 least £60 per ton, or £3 per cwt.f The Danish (Danske) iron was 

 probably Swedish, just as at present much of the Danish butter im- 

 ported comes from Swedish dairies. 



* There is evidence in old documents that the name Sheffield may be a 

 corruption of " Escafeld," meaning " the field of waters." 



t Professor Thorold Rogers, in his Oxford Lectures, 1888-9, stated that 

 about 1685, using a multiplier of 2, the value in modern money of English 

 wrought iron was about 7M. per ton. The Sheffield record, however, proves 

 beyond doubt that in 1557, or more than a century-and-a-quarter earlier, the 

 imported and superior Spanish and Swedish irons were commanding in 

 Sheffield, retail, not more than 14L per ton, which, using a multiplier of 4-5,. 

 is equivalent in present money to 63i. per ton, 



