Pot Black

The Crucible, Sheffield. No not the snooker venue, rather Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet and the only surviving crucible steel furnace in the UK.

Actually, I'm a proud Sheffield lad and I grew up round here. I decided to go back for a visit. The museum trust is working with Lottery funding to get the place in shape and the lighting was poor (this was an eight second exposure). However, a great day, so let me tell you a story - if you’ve the time :)

Between 1740 and 1750 Benjamin Huntsman a Quaker clockmaker of Sheffield who was not satisfied with the quality of metal he was able to obtain, devised an improved method of making steel. The process was a relatively simple one. He took “blister steel” - that is, bar iron which had been heated in a furnace with charcoal for twelve days and thereby been hardened - and melted it in small clay crucibles placed in a coke furnace so hot that it burned away all impurities.

The finished product, crucible or cast steel was peculiarly hard yet flexible, suitable for articles like watch springs and razor-blades. But it came only slowly into general use. Huntsman took out no patent; nevertheless he tried to keep the details of his new method a secret.

There is a story, probably only a legend, that a rival ironmaster, Samuel Walker dressed up as a poor beggar and persuaded Huntsman’s workmen to let him warm himself near the furnaces, and so discovered the new technique. Whether it is true or not, Walker made a princely fortune for himself in the great foundries built near Rotherham.

Hill, CP: British Economic and Social History 1700 – 1939 (p. 48). Edward Arnold (London) 1961.

Unlikely end-story, but the true end-story is that those foundries of Tinsley became the Meadowhall shopping mall of today…

So, who got the biggest break in the end I wonder? ;)