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Round Yorkshire With A Knife: The Wizard’s Quest Part 18 – By the Banks of the River Sheaf
Background: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/sh...-to-Jack-Black
Recent instalments -
Part 13: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...nife-The-Wizard’s-Quest-Part-13-–-Settle-Down
Part 14: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...-The-Wizard’s-Quest-Part-14-Withering-Heights
Part 15: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...Wizard’s-Quest-Part-15-–-The-Marmalade-Barlow!
Part 16: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...he-Wizard’s-Quest-Part-16-–-The-Week-That-Was
Part 17: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...’s-Quest-Part-17-–-What-A-Way-To-Spend-Easter
The Sheaf is the river after which Sheffield was named, and the reader might assume it is the city’s main river. That is not the case however, and indeed for much of its length a boy could jump across it. Yet, it was once the southern boundary between the ancient English kingdom of Northumbria and the kingdom of Mercia, and was later lined with water wheels and grinding hulls.
Today, there is still much evidence of industry along the Sheaf, even if, for the most part, that evidence is confined to derelict factories and ancient weirs. By the banks of the Sheaf however, a couple of miles outside town, in a fairly run-down area, an antiques quarter has sprang up over the past 30 years. Today, there are more than a dozen antique shops and centres within a mile of each other, and while such places tend to be expensive, the Quest demanded that I visit them at least once.
I set off for Sheffield early in the morning, arriving in good time an hour later, and made my way up the hill from the bus station, and along Norfolk Street, to the city centre.
Whenever I visit Sheffield these days, I find myself thinking of the day I spent there in the company of Duncan and his wife Sue. While showing them round the town, at one point, Duncan asked me about Norfolk Street, where Joseph Rodgers had their famous factory and showrooms. Now it’s quite a long time now since I lived in Sheffield, and I’m beginning to forget things, I also have the memory of a middle-aged man, and at the time I couldn’t think where Norfolk Street was. There’s another reason, which is that during my lifetime Norfolk Street has been a minor and unimportant street. When I was a very young child it bore the scars of the war and of decades of urban decay, with bomb sites and crumbling buildings. Both ends of the street were chopped off by new ‘dual carriageways’ in the 60’s. Then, at the start of the 1970’s, an ugly Town Hall extension was built, known locally as ‘The Egg Box’, and this split Norfolk Street into two halves, further marginalising through traffic. While one end of the street still has a few old and attractive buildings, the end where the Rodgers building stood has mostly been lined with ugly office blocks for decades. Today, the Egg Box has gone, and the area looks better, though Norfolk Street, which in fact Duncan and Sue and I, crossed at least twice, is still a minor back street with relatively little traffic.
I called at the ‘Sheffield Scene’ shop, and bought a few postcards and a book listing the 17th century Sheffield cutlers. At the relatively early hour, the town was fairly quiet, despite the World Snooker Championship being on at the Crucible Theatre nearby. I called in at the Millenium Galleries, and was pleased to see a range of Trevor Ablett’sslipjoints for sale, albeit at ‘tourist’ prices.
I crossed the Peace Gardens and decided to have a look in the Town Hall with its statue of the metalworking god Vulcan aloft. Inside the beautiful building, the hallway of which was strangely dominated by a Catalan giant, I chatted to a friendly porter. He told me that there was some metal-ware on display in a nearby corridor, but when I looked, there was only one knife, a rather ugly and recent item, with a liner lock. Once again, Sheffield is missing an opportunity to promote its historic cutlery industry, and what remains of it.
I caught the bus out of town to the antiques quarter, and entered the first antiques centre I came to. The displays were unimpressive, and the contents vastly overpriced, with the few tawdry slipjoints I saw priced at between four and ten times what I would normally pay. Prices in antique shops tend to be high here, and I have previously noted the high prices South Yorkshire vendors seem to expect for pocket-knives. I guess they get a lot of tourist trade, and that the town is a natural port of call for visiting penknife collectors.
I crossed the road to another place, a vast labyrinthine old building, with many interesting items on display. I saw an old fork, at an eye-watering price, identical to one I had picked up for less than a US dollar a few weeks earlier (and mine is in better condition). There was a beautiful carving set, one of the nicest I’ve ever seen, but at a price, which while it may have been fair, was still a very large amount of money. In one locked cabinet, I spotted a slipjoint similar in style to a William Rodgers Jack knife I have, and asked the proprietor if I might inspect it. Since the price was not too high I bought it with only a cursory inspection. As you might already have surmised from previous Quest episodes, the combination of knives on sale and money in my wallet, does not make Jack a rich man. I can get a bit carried away, as indeed I did here, purchasing all the mediocre slipjoints I could find, at prices a few pounds beyond their worth. The Jack knife actually looks re-worked to me, a homemade project, and I’ll be interested to see if the blades are hardened.
Elsewhere in the vast emporium, I spotted a couple of nice old cleavers, and some inferior carving sets, before I noticed an absolute beauty of an old skinning knife in the back of a cabinet.
Now I should lay my cards on the table at this point: When I first took up the Quest, I thought long and hard about what might constitute a special prize for the Wizard. While I own very few, I have an interest in what one might call settler’s knives. In the early days of European immigration to Australia, most of those arriving there had little money, and many arrived in hard circumstances, particularly those who had been ‘transported’ and arrived in chains. It seems to me that people would have prized any knife they could get their hands on, and like other settlers, would need something versatile. I imagine that a butcher’s knife or one of the simple patterns like those popularised in the US by the Green River company, or indeed any old kitchen knife made from good steel, would have been a prize for a feller living by his wits out in the bush or trying to make a straight life for himself in this new land.
While I have knives which are just what I have in mind, and which I would gladly give to the Wizard, by doing so I would not be fulfilling the terms of the Quest. Also, while I have something like this in mind, I might also come across a prize of a completely different nature. During my numerous Quest expeditions, I’ve come across a few interesting knives, but for one reason or another, none of them have yet qualified in terms of the parameters laid down by the Wizard himself.
Now the hefty old skinner was as nice an example as I’ve seen (the pics here really don’t do it justice I’m afraid), and despite a plump price tag, was just the sort of thing I’d been looking for. I got the gentleman proprietor to unlock the case for me so that I could properly inspect the blade, but straightaway I noticed that it was made in Solingen rather than Sheffield. Despite its loveliness the knife didn’t qualify and I did not think I could justify buying yet another expensive knife which did not fulfil the Wizard’s Quest.
I left the shop, and crossed the road to another antiques centre, which was also a labyrinth of rooms and staircases. I had a thorough look around, but there was nothing in the way of pocket-knives. At one point I thought I had spotted an Italian stiletto, which would have been of interest to our resident stiletto collector, but it turned out to be a novelty ‘flick comb’!
On a whim, I decided to buy the Solingen knife I had seen before anyway, and after doing so headed up the road to another half a dozen antique shops. Unfortunately I didn’t find a single knife in any of them, but a young lady in one told me she had a pocket-knife at home which might be of interest. She said it had something “knifey” etched on the blade, which I correctly guessed was ‘I Cut My Way’. She took my details and said she’d e-mail me about it.
Regulars here might recall that when I visited the old scythe works and museum at Abbeydale Hamlet last year (see http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1105366-A-Visit-To-Abbeydale-Industrial-Hamlet ), I came across a load of Trevor Ablett Ettricks, with prices which had clearly been set many years ago. Since this was just before the museum closed for the winter I was not able to snaffle any, but with the knives in mind, I set off further up the Sheaf to the old works.
I arrived at Abbeydale to find that over the winter, a new visitor centre had been built, which serves among other things, as a cafe and shop. There was now a new and more varied stock of Mr Ablett’s knives on sale, but the prices were two or three times what I had seen before.
I headed back into town and consoled myself with a pint in ‘The Benjamin Huntsman’, musing ruefully about the fact that I’d been to virtually every shop in the Sheffield Antiques Quarter, only to find a handful of mediocre penknives, the best of which would have made Thomas Turner turn in his grave, and the best knife of the day, by far, was from Solingen rather than Sheffield.
The Hunt Continues!
Jack
Background: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/sh...-to-Jack-Black
Recent instalments -
Part 13: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...nife-The-Wizard’s-Quest-Part-13-–-Settle-Down
Part 14: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...-The-Wizard’s-Quest-Part-14-Withering-Heights
Part 15: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...Wizard’s-Quest-Part-15-–-The-Marmalade-Barlow!
Part 16: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...he-Wizard’s-Quest-Part-16-–-The-Week-That-Was
Part 17: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...’s-Quest-Part-17-–-What-A-Way-To-Spend-Easter
The Sheaf is the river after which Sheffield was named, and the reader might assume it is the city’s main river. That is not the case however, and indeed for much of its length a boy could jump across it. Yet, it was once the southern boundary between the ancient English kingdom of Northumbria and the kingdom of Mercia, and was later lined with water wheels and grinding hulls.
Today, there is still much evidence of industry along the Sheaf, even if, for the most part, that evidence is confined to derelict factories and ancient weirs. By the banks of the Sheaf however, a couple of miles outside town, in a fairly run-down area, an antiques quarter has sprang up over the past 30 years. Today, there are more than a dozen antique shops and centres within a mile of each other, and while such places tend to be expensive, the Quest demanded that I visit them at least once.
I set off for Sheffield early in the morning, arriving in good time an hour later, and made my way up the hill from the bus station, and along Norfolk Street, to the city centre.
Whenever I visit Sheffield these days, I find myself thinking of the day I spent there in the company of Duncan and his wife Sue. While showing them round the town, at one point, Duncan asked me about Norfolk Street, where Joseph Rodgers had their famous factory and showrooms. Now it’s quite a long time now since I lived in Sheffield, and I’m beginning to forget things, I also have the memory of a middle-aged man, and at the time I couldn’t think where Norfolk Street was. There’s another reason, which is that during my lifetime Norfolk Street has been a minor and unimportant street. When I was a very young child it bore the scars of the war and of decades of urban decay, with bomb sites and crumbling buildings. Both ends of the street were chopped off by new ‘dual carriageways’ in the 60’s. Then, at the start of the 1970’s, an ugly Town Hall extension was built, known locally as ‘The Egg Box’, and this split Norfolk Street into two halves, further marginalising through traffic. While one end of the street still has a few old and attractive buildings, the end where the Rodgers building stood has mostly been lined with ugly office blocks for decades. Today, the Egg Box has gone, and the area looks better, though Norfolk Street, which in fact Duncan and Sue and I, crossed at least twice, is still a minor back street with relatively little traffic.
I called at the ‘Sheffield Scene’ shop, and bought a few postcards and a book listing the 17th century Sheffield cutlers. At the relatively early hour, the town was fairly quiet, despite the World Snooker Championship being on at the Crucible Theatre nearby. I called in at the Millenium Galleries, and was pleased to see a range of Trevor Ablett’sslipjoints for sale, albeit at ‘tourist’ prices.
I crossed the Peace Gardens and decided to have a look in the Town Hall with its statue of the metalworking god Vulcan aloft. Inside the beautiful building, the hallway of which was strangely dominated by a Catalan giant, I chatted to a friendly porter. He told me that there was some metal-ware on display in a nearby corridor, but when I looked, there was only one knife, a rather ugly and recent item, with a liner lock. Once again, Sheffield is missing an opportunity to promote its historic cutlery industry, and what remains of it.
I caught the bus out of town to the antiques quarter, and entered the first antiques centre I came to. The displays were unimpressive, and the contents vastly overpriced, with the few tawdry slipjoints I saw priced at between four and ten times what I would normally pay. Prices in antique shops tend to be high here, and I have previously noted the high prices South Yorkshire vendors seem to expect for pocket-knives. I guess they get a lot of tourist trade, and that the town is a natural port of call for visiting penknife collectors.
I crossed the road to another place, a vast labyrinthine old building, with many interesting items on display. I saw an old fork, at an eye-watering price, identical to one I had picked up for less than a US dollar a few weeks earlier (and mine is in better condition). There was a beautiful carving set, one of the nicest I’ve ever seen, but at a price, which while it may have been fair, was still a very large amount of money. In one locked cabinet, I spotted a slipjoint similar in style to a William Rodgers Jack knife I have, and asked the proprietor if I might inspect it. Since the price was not too high I bought it with only a cursory inspection. As you might already have surmised from previous Quest episodes, the combination of knives on sale and money in my wallet, does not make Jack a rich man. I can get a bit carried away, as indeed I did here, purchasing all the mediocre slipjoints I could find, at prices a few pounds beyond their worth. The Jack knife actually looks re-worked to me, a homemade project, and I’ll be interested to see if the blades are hardened.
Elsewhere in the vast emporium, I spotted a couple of nice old cleavers, and some inferior carving sets, before I noticed an absolute beauty of an old skinning knife in the back of a cabinet.
Now I should lay my cards on the table at this point: When I first took up the Quest, I thought long and hard about what might constitute a special prize for the Wizard. While I own very few, I have an interest in what one might call settler’s knives. In the early days of European immigration to Australia, most of those arriving there had little money, and many arrived in hard circumstances, particularly those who had been ‘transported’ and arrived in chains. It seems to me that people would have prized any knife they could get their hands on, and like other settlers, would need something versatile. I imagine that a butcher’s knife or one of the simple patterns like those popularised in the US by the Green River company, or indeed any old kitchen knife made from good steel, would have been a prize for a feller living by his wits out in the bush or trying to make a straight life for himself in this new land.
While I have knives which are just what I have in mind, and which I would gladly give to the Wizard, by doing so I would not be fulfilling the terms of the Quest. Also, while I have something like this in mind, I might also come across a prize of a completely different nature. During my numerous Quest expeditions, I’ve come across a few interesting knives, but for one reason or another, none of them have yet qualified in terms of the parameters laid down by the Wizard himself.
Now the hefty old skinner was as nice an example as I’ve seen (the pics here really don’t do it justice I’m afraid), and despite a plump price tag, was just the sort of thing I’d been looking for. I got the gentleman proprietor to unlock the case for me so that I could properly inspect the blade, but straightaway I noticed that it was made in Solingen rather than Sheffield. Despite its loveliness the knife didn’t qualify and I did not think I could justify buying yet another expensive knife which did not fulfil the Wizard’s Quest.
I left the shop, and crossed the road to another antiques centre, which was also a labyrinth of rooms and staircases. I had a thorough look around, but there was nothing in the way of pocket-knives. At one point I thought I had spotted an Italian stiletto, which would have been of interest to our resident stiletto collector, but it turned out to be a novelty ‘flick comb’!
On a whim, I decided to buy the Solingen knife I had seen before anyway, and after doing so headed up the road to another half a dozen antique shops. Unfortunately I didn’t find a single knife in any of them, but a young lady in one told me she had a pocket-knife at home which might be of interest. She said it had something “knifey” etched on the blade, which I correctly guessed was ‘I Cut My Way’. She took my details and said she’d e-mail me about it.
Regulars here might recall that when I visited the old scythe works and museum at Abbeydale Hamlet last year (see http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1105366-A-Visit-To-Abbeydale-Industrial-Hamlet ), I came across a load of Trevor Ablett Ettricks, with prices which had clearly been set many years ago. Since this was just before the museum closed for the winter I was not able to snaffle any, but with the knives in mind, I set off further up the Sheaf to the old works.
I arrived at Abbeydale to find that over the winter, a new visitor centre had been built, which serves among other things, as a cafe and shop. There was now a new and more varied stock of Mr Ablett’s knives on sale, but the prices were two or three times what I had seen before.
I headed back into town and consoled myself with a pint in ‘The Benjamin Huntsman’, musing ruefully about the fact that I’d been to virtually every shop in the Sheffield Antiques Quarter, only to find a handful of mediocre penknives, the best of which would have made Thomas Turner turn in his grave, and the best knife of the day, by far, was from Solingen rather than Sheffield.
The Hunt Continues!
Jack
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Thanks for another very interesting installment and best of luck with the quest!
