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Beardshaw is a common Sheffield surname, and the trade and training of the first Jonathan are therefore uncertain. In 1789-90 a John Beardshaw was dealing with the firm of George Tucker and Co, whose ledger of the period is in the Sheffield Archives ; his address was White Croft, but an even closer connection is probably the Jonathan Beardshaw who is listed in the 1787 directory as a victualler in Hollis [sic] Croft, a parallel street only yards away; the directory for 1817 shows Jonathan Beardshaw as a victualler, i.e. keeper of the Ball public house, in Hawley Croft, again a street in the same area. Hollis Croft was the address of the sawmaker John Harrison, an early entrant to the trade whose name disappears from the directories in 1817 with the death of his son Thomas. Some of the first entries in the Beardshaw ledger, which starts in 1823, show purchases of sawmaking tools and stock; these entries are not the very first, however, and it is not clear from this document where Beardshaw came by the tools to begin: were they perhaps from the defunct Harrison works, or elsewhere? He could actually have started with almost nothing more than a single room, Sheffield industry being so structured that everything could have been hired in some form or other, from skilled labor to tools, materials and production facilities; owning one's own was probably more economical, however, hence the purchases noted. The opening entries in the Beardshaw ledger date from 1823, and show sales of saws to prominent Sheffield firms like William Marples and Naylor Sanderson: from its first days it was integrating with local industry, but no doubt a newcomer would have had few selling options, and would have had to use local firms which combined manufacture with merchanting the products of others. To have a traveler who was either a partner or perhaps an employee was something that would have had to wait until a degree of prosperity was assured. However, the binding of an apprentice at the same time, and the immediate inclusion of Beardshaw's son in the firm may be taken as additional indications that the victualler was by then already feeling confident that he had a future in sawmaking. Nevertheless, Beardshaw still chose to appear as a victualler at the Ball a full five years later, in the 1828 directory, where his entry is "Victualler and sawmaker" [italics added]. By 1833 the firm called itself "Jonathan Beardshaw and Son, saw, steel busk and doctor manufacturers and cutlery dealers". A George Beardshaw (Jonathan's son?), "saw manufacturer", is listed living in a nearby street, and a William Beardshaw (another relative?) is in Garden street as a maker of stag, buck and horn knife hafts. There was such an enormous amount of cutlery making in Sheffield at that time that it is not necessary to postulate that the inclusion of cutlery dealing with the Beardshaws' other activities was brought about by a relationship with this maker of knife hafts. The ledger has stock inventories dated 1825, 1827 and 1831, but it is the only surviving company document of that time, and there is nothing in it to show why the firm located where it did, and still less what reasons may have persuaded Beardshaw to start making saws. It is possible that he was moved to add sawmaking to victualling when his near neighbor Harrison died; leaving a saw works without an owner, but the six year interval seems long at a time when firms of all kinds were coming and going so fast. Publicans of all eras, and still more so before the days of mass communications, have been literally in a position - behind the bar - to pick up the news and gossip of a locality. The 19th century records are replete with the names of those who either had a shop or public house concurrently with running a secondary metal manufacturing business, which is what Beardshaw did when he put the two together in 1823. As for location, Hollis Croft contained at least three sawmaking
firms in the years around 1820. According to the rate books, which
unfortunately do not always give the ratepayer's house number, in
1818 John Kenyon was at number 6, Thomas Harrison at number 10a ,
and in 1821/2 Staniforth and Marshall were somewhere in the street .
The first address of Beardshaws is number 5, Hollis Croft, but it is
not possible, because The next change, noted in the directory of 1856, and perhaps engendered partly because the premises in Garden Street were unsatisfactory, was to a completely different part of the town, two miles away in the rapidly developing east end (the old village of Attercliffe, on the way to Rotterdam), where all the new big steel firms were establishing themselves in the manufacture of Bessemer's steel. The way had been shown by Spear and Jackson, by then probably the largest Sheffield sawmakers, who had been the first to leave the old industrialized area round West Bar to take entirely fresh land next to the new railway line in 1841; other sawmakers and steelmakers established themselves in the same prime position in the 1840's. In the standard manner, Jonathan Beardshaw and sons gave a name to their new premises in Effingham road: "Baltic Steel Works". Why they should have chosen this name is not known, but the choice may have been driven by the same sort of consideration that led other firms, in naming their works, to give an allusion to their most important markets. Two examples from later in the 19th century are Robert Sorby's Kangaroo Works and Taylor Brothers' Adelaide Works: both firms had large export markets in Australia. By the 1850's John Kenyon, and no doubt other firms whose catalogues are no longer extant and whose product lines can therefore not be known, were exporting very large quantities of saws to the Baltic and Russia, with some of their product types (large saws designed for tree felling) specifically named as Polish and Russian; Beardshaws' export patterns at this time are not known. The other significant feature of the naming is the word Steel Works rather than Saw Works, suggesting that they wished their production of the former to be seen as the more important. In the following decades there were several changes. The 1862 directory shows the formation of a sawmaking company called Beardshaw, Stevenson and co, with premises at 32 Hollis Croft and also at nearby number 42 Carr lane (the latter having been occupied by two sawmaking firms with unrelated names in the previous 15 years). By 1864 Stevenson had gone, establishing himself some way away in Little Pond street, with Jonathan Beardshaw at Diamond Works, Hollis Croft (no number is given); both these firms disappear from the list of sawmakers by the time of the next directory, 1868. The Diamond Works address comes back in the sawmakers list in the 1876 directory, the owners being J and TS Beardshaw, but has gone by 1879. In 1884 a new Beardshaw - Herbert - is included for the first time, and at a new address: Acme Steel Works, Bessemer road, which was only a very short distance from the parent works in Effingham road. This listing is again in one directory only, but business of some sort was probably continued there, even if it did not include sawmaking, because by 1895 (until 1907) there is a firm called Joseph Beardshaw in Bessemer road. All this time what may be perhaps the main site of operations continued at the Baltic Steel Works, with the name Beardshaw making its last appearance in the list of sawmakers in 1971; by then, as a result of amalgamations and buyouts, it was called Beardshaw Senior Steels Ltd. The purpose of this long list of changing premises is to show how fluid the sawmaking industry was; other Sheffield secondary metal industries were probably little different. The reason for the changes lies partly in the nature of Sheffield industrial structures, partly, as has been suggested above, through the passage of time - premises become too small or in the wrong place - and partly because of external factors such as developing markets and new technologies. The structure of Sheffield industry has been the subject of considerable academic study over many years; successive generations of Beardshaws were affected by all these, and were a pioneering firm, witness their move to the Attercliffe area in 1856 and their developments in steel technology in the early years of the 20th century. October, 2005
(This article is part of the larger research thesis on the economic
history of the Sheffield saw industry 1750-1830. For further
information, contact
Simon Barley.
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numbering and its
changes are so unclear, to say if this number is the same as any of
the above three. By 1833 they were at number 18 Garden Street; this
road is parallel to Hollis Croft, so that the premises possibly
remained the same but became designated by the entrance at the back
rather than the front. The directories show the business address
changing to two other numbers in Garden street in 1837 and 1841,
with a final change to numbers 16 and 18 in 1845, this last
presumably indicating an increase in size. The firm remained
there until 1854.
