Qualla: Beehive Works https://qualla.com/beehive-works en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/z/beehive-works-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Beehive Works https://qualla.com/beehive-works Beehive Works: Introduction https://qualla.com/beehive-works/ Photo credit Martin Speck, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sheffield's cutlery industry was, for most of its history, not really an industry at all. It was a swarm. Tens of thousands of independent craftsmen - grinders, forgers, hafters, polishers - worked in tiny one-room workshops scattered across the city, each man master of one trade and one trade only. They were called little mesters, and they made the steel that travelled the world. The Beehive Works on Milton Street, in the Devonshire Quarter, was a purpose-built hive for them. Three storeys high and eighteen bays long, the building was put up in stages from the late 1850s, with a courtyard, a steam engine to drive the wheels, and external stairs leading separately up to each upper-floor workshop. The little mesters rented their space, paid for their power, and kept their independence. Their painted sign, 'Beehive Brand - Gregory Fenton Ltd - Knives and Tools', still runs along the upper storey today.

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Image: Martin Speck | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/z/beehive-works-wp/gcqz-beehive-works-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Beehive Works: Steel City https://qualla.com/beehive-works/ Photo credit Mick Knapton, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the second half of the nineteenth century Sheffield was the world's leading producer of crucible steel and the cutlery and tools made from it. The city had iron ore, coal, grindstone from the local Hallamshire sandstones, and water from the steep brooks running down from the P...

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Image: Mick Knapton | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/z/beehive-works-wp/gcqz-beehive-works-steel-city.mp3 0:06 2 full Beehive Works: Atkinson Brothers, In Mind https://qualla.com/beehive-works/ Photo credit Mick Knapton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The first known occupants of the new works, in the early 1860s, were B. Mathewman and Sons, who called the building the Milton Works. By 1888 the Atkinson Brothers had taken over, making steel, cutlery, files and electroplated ware under the trade mark 'In Mind' - a punning rebus...

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Image: Mick Knapton | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/z/beehive-works-wp/gcqz-beehive-works-atkinson-brothers-in-mind.mp3 0:06 3 full Beehive Works: Bricks, Sashes and Stone https://qualla.com/beehive-works/ Photo credit Mick Knapton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The building visible from Milton Street today is essentially as the Atkinsons left it. Red brick walls, eighteen bays long, three storeys plus cellars, ashlar stone dressings around the windows and doors, a slate roof. The windows are mostly twelve-pane sash, which lets in a usab...

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Image: Mick Knapton | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/z/beehive-works-wp/gcqz-beehive-works-bricks-sashes-and-stone.mp3 0:06 4 full Beehive Works: Gregory Fenton and the Quiet Survival https://qualla.com/beehive-works/ Photo credit Mick Knapton, CC BY-SA 3.0. Atkinson Brothers gave way in time to other firms, and in 1968 a new company, Gregory Fenton Ltd, was formed by the merger of Gregory Brothers and Joseph Fenton. They took over the Beehive Works and made knives and tools there for decades. By the time the wider Sheffield cutlery ...

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Image: Mick Knapton | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/z/beehive-works-wp/gcqz-beehive-works-gregory-fenton-and-the-quiet-survival.mp3 0:06 5 full Beehive Works: What the Quarter Holds https://qualla.com/beehive-works/ Photo credit Mick Knapton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Devonshire Quarter around Milton Street has remade itself in recent decades into one of Sheffield's most active independent districts - bars, music venues, vintage shops, restaurants, small studios - much of it occupying the city's old metal-trades buildings. Beehive Works is...

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Image: Mick Knapton | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/q/z/beehive-works-wp/gcqz-beehive-works-what-the-quarter-holds.mp3 0:06 6 full