Ecclesfield's Working Past
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
FILE CUTTING GIMLETS, AUGERS AND BRACE BITS WOODLAND CRAFTS Ecclesfield Conservation Group By the beginning of the nineteenth century nailmaking What is peculiar about these trades is they were Most local woods were managed in the past as coppices in in Ecclesfield was in sharp decline. This was because monopolised largely by one family. For example, in the which grew multi-stemmed coppice and single-stemmed American and French machine-made wire nails were now 1881 census Bernard Ridge, aged 29 of Wallet End, was standard trees. The nearest coppice wood to the village on the market. The makers of hand-made nails could not recorded as a gimlet maker. Next door lived Thomas was Lee Shroggs Wood. It was listed as a coppice wood compete. Nailmaking smithies were then converted into Ridge, aged 49, brace bit maker. Eleven doors away lived as early as 1600. The uses to which the wood and timber Discover Ecclesfield’s file workshops and domestic file cutting grew rapidly. In John Ridge, aged 61, and he and his son Morris were were put were legion. The timber trees, mostly oak, 1834 a local directory listed five filemakers in Ecclesfield; both gimlet makers. And finally, two doors further away were used in building projects such as timber-framed Working Past the 1851 census listed 158 file cutters in the village core lived Alfred Ridge, licensed victualler at the Ball Inn, aged houses, barns and industrial premises such as forges (32 % of the male labour force); and by 1871 the number 65, whose sons Henry, George and Tom were all gimlet and grinding wheels. There are still two cruck-framed DISCOVER ECCLESFIELD’S WORKING PAST had risen to 221 (nearly 40 % of the male labour force). makers. buildings standing in the centre of the village. The bark By 1901 the number of file cutters had dropped to 121 of felled oak trees was peeled and made into a liquor for Until relatively recently, the village of Ecclesfield, now part (20 % of the working population), of whom 17 were The family trade went tanning leather to make animal hides workable. There of Sheffield’s northern suburbs, relied on the exploitation named as machine file cutters. on into the twentieth are, as already noted, the gravestones of three tanners in As with nailmaking, at of the physical resources within its parish boundaries: century. Bernard Ridge’s the churchyard. first middlemen supplied the land, the woods, the stone, the coal, the iron and the youngest son, born in the blank files to the power generated from its small streams and brooks. These 1879, was John Thomas There were also many woodland craftsmen and marketed gave rise at an early date not only to farming, quarrying Ridge pictured opposite crafts associated with coppice woods. the finished products. and woodland crafts but also to a tradition of light metal in later life – making a These included basket making, besom Later, in the second half trades, and later to foundry work, engineering and coke gimlet. When he first making, chair bodging, coopering of the nineteenth century, and chemicals production. started making gimlets (barrel-making) and turnery (the the hand craftsmen he said he got ‘tuppence making of wooden plates, dishes, became outworkers for factories that produced both This, the first of two leaflets, together with an a gross’. He finally retired ladles and spoons). These trades hand-cut and machine-made files. And in an increasing accompanying information board, is designed to describe in his nineties, the last were all represented in Ecclesfield in number of cases, the hand craftsmen themselves were and explain the working past of the old village core. of Ecclesfield’s gimlet the past. There are gravestones of a organised in small works like, for example, that of Henry makers. wheelwright, William Yeule (d.1717) Greaves of St Michael’s Works, pictured above with his For bus times to Ecclesfield contact South Yorkshire PTE and a leather dresser, James Crowther, workforce. In 1879 another local firm, that of David Traveline 01709 515151 or find timetables online at www. (d.1802) in the churchyard. In an 1822 Parker, then at Wallet End, successfully bid to make some travelsouthyorkshire.com In his workshop, the hand file cutter sat on a stool and directory a wood turner/chair-maker, a basket maker, of the hand-made replacements for several thousand a cooper and two wheelwrights are mentioned living worked on his files on an anvil on a stock. The blank file machine-made files returned from Russia because they This leaflet has been researched, written and illustrated by and working in the village and in the 1851 census three rested on a block of lead and was held in place by leather were considered inferior to hand-cut ones. Mel and Joan Jones on behalf of Ecclesfield Conservation Group: straps that were held tight by putting a foot through the woodmen, one sawyer, 14 joiners, three coopers and one Website: www.conservation.ecclesfieldgroups.com leather loop. Teeth were cut into a blank file with a chisel besom maker are listed. Email: [email protected] and the distinctively curved-handled file cutter’s hammer. In 1938 one of the last The lead block was regularly handled, the thumb and The help of the following in the hand file cutters, John index finger of the left hand were constantly licked to Besom makers preparation of the leaflet is gratefully Birkhead, then aged grip the chisel and so lead was ingested. The file cutters’ 75, sold his tools to acknowledged: Mary Bulmer, Joy Fell, disease was lead poisoning. John Greaves, The Hawley Collection, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Above: John Thomas David Hey, Harry Ridge, Harold Rodgers, Ridge’s workshop Cyril Slinn and Bob Warburton. Like nailmaking before it, hand file cutting had finally succumbed to Opposite: gimlet This project is part of the East Peak Industrial Heritage the inevitable march of making tools and Programme, which is co-funded by English Heritage and LEADER mechanisation. stages in the production (with funding from Defra and the European Union). of a gimlet The European Agricultural Fund for Regional Development: Europe Investing in Rural Areas 1: The village core A MYRIAD OF LOST OCCUPATIONS There are also three wall ECCLESFIELD NAILMAKING plaques to local industrialists VILLAGE CORE IN 1901 There were a large number of crafts, industries and who lived in Ecclesfield For at least 500 years there were nailmakers in Ecclesfield. occupations carried on in the past in the village of parish. There is one in There are two sixteenth century wills of nailers in Ecclesfield and now largely gone forever. As well as memory of James Dixon Ecclesfield, John Hill’s (1506) and Thomas Cutts’ (1583). the usual farmers, shopkeepers, stonemasons and (d.1852) founder of the But the trade had probably been around much longer world-famous silverware blacksmiths there were, for example, those employed in than that. By the eighteenth century Ecclesfield was the manufacturers, James the making of nails, screws, files and gimlets, and from the centre of a thriving nailmaking area, with 40 nailmaking late nineteenth century increasing numbers engaged in Dixon & Son of the Cornish workshops listed in 1707 in An Old Ecclesfield Diary. In coal mining and foundry work. Women’s work was often Works in Sheffield. There home-based – assisting in nailmaking and file cutting, are also wall plaques in 1733 the Ecclesfield Nailmakers’ Agreement was signed dressmaking and even veil making. Some women were memory of Jonathan Walker stating that apprentices should remain with their master schoolteachers and many became domestic servants in (d.1807) of the famous for the full term of seven years. It was signed by 195 other households. This leaflet is one of two planned by makers of cannons, whose ‘hearth-masters’ from around the region. But by the Ecclesfield Conservation Group to reveal Ecclesfield’s family originally came from nineteenth century the trade was in marked decline and industrial past. This one covers the village core. It is Grenoside, and in memory the 1851 census only records 26 nailers in the village core, The basic nailmaking process was a simple one and easy planned to publish a second leaflet covering the Whitley of Thomas Rawson (d. 1826), and this had fallen to only four by 1871. By 1901 only to learn. The iron rods were heated in a fire which was Wall plaque to information valley, the Common and the low-lying land between a very successful tanner from one person is recorded in the nail trade, a nail merchant, kept hot by means of a pair of bellows, and then cut into Wardsend. James Dixon board Butterthwaite and Smithy Wood. Edward Fawley. Fawleys were recorded as nailmakers lengths on an anvil. The cut pieces were then placed in a hole in the anvil and hit with a hammer to form a head. in Ecclesfield as early as 1696 and in 1851 there were Although most gravestones do not record the occupation This was done at great speed and there were numerous of the deceased, the minority that do are of great interest. three separate Fawley households within nine doors of variations on the basic process to make different kinds of MEMORIALS IN ST. MARY’S CHURCH each other at Town End AND CHURCHYARD There is the grave of Parkin Jeffcock, mining engineer, nail – horse nails, rose heads and flats, for example. who lost his life in 1866 attempting to rescue trapped where the heads of household were all In the church itself there are and injured miners in the Oaks Colliery disaster at West window to Gravestone of Edmund Barnsley.