The City Hall, in nearby Barker's Pool, is a magnificent building of Darley Dale stone erected in 1932, and one of the finest civic halls in the country. Chief among its fine halls is the nobly-proportioned Oval Hall, seating 2,800, with sweeping galleries and a great platform for choral or orchestral concerts and public meetings. The Grand Organ, concealed behind the platform grill, is one of the best in the country. Below the Oval Hall is the Central Suite, with a dance hall which can accommodate up to a thousand; the Memorial Hall at the rear of the building, seating 537 is dedicated to the fallen of the first World War.

The Cutlers' Hall in Church Street, directly opposite the Cathedral, replaced two earlier halls on the same site. Built in 1832, it has since been considerably extended and modified ; it includes a lofty marbled main hall, a banqueting hall (restored in 1955 in Regency style) and other handsome rooms, and is used for many social events as well as for the administration of the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire.

Prominent among the many impressive buildings erected during the past few years are the College of Technology, the Granville College of Further Education and the Castle Market, opened in 1959 and replacing the old Norfolk Market Hall. The principal shopping streets, damaged in the air raids of 1940, are rapidly being rebuilt and the main stores, completely destroyed during the war, replaced. There has been extensive re-development from The Wicker in the north-east to The Moor in the southwest ; the latter shopping street has been rebuilt throughout almost its entire length.

Not far from the City Centre lies the pleasing combination of the new and old buildings of the University, backed by the green of Weston Park.. Prominent across the park is one of Sheffield's most noble facades-the City Museum and Mappin Art Gallery. Nearby, the first stage of the Hallamshire Hospital, in a superb setting, overlooks the older Jessop and Royal Hospitals, the Applied Science buildings of the University and the fine neo-classic lines of King Edward VII School.

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Town to City:

The story of Sheffield is inseparable from that of its industries. By 1700 Sheffield had almost gained the monopoly of the cutlery trade and by the middle of the eighteenth century the growth of this trade had been followed by a considerable increase in the size of the town. At this time the population of all Sheffield parish was not much less than 15,000, then fresh fame and wealth came through the introduction of two important new industries.

About 1740 Thomas Boulsover found a new way of plating copper with silver and the firms which soon afterwards were founded for making the beautiful ware now known as Old Sheffield Plate added sterling silver articles to their products. Even more important was the achievement of Boulsover's contemporary, Benjamin Huntsman, who invented the crucible method of making a hard tool steel of exceptional uniformity

This was the beginning of modern Sheffield, so closely identified with the making of special steels, and many firms making steel soon established the town as the centre of the tool steel industry. A great new range of tools and other cutting implements, and some machine parts, were added to the older staple products. The essential services of industry were being introduced at the same time. Turnpike roads succeeded the pack-horse tracks across the surrounding hills ; a canal was made into the centre of the town from the flat eastern approaches ; and the coming of the railway greatly speeded up the development of larger and heavier products, so that when Sir Henry Bessemer introduced his large-scale method of steel melting, suitable transport was available for heavy castings.

The town spread further along the valleys, and the hillsides were soon dotted with the estates and mansions of the new steel magnates. A polite society had grown up which preferred pursuits less rough than those which had satisfied the cutlery community. Professional men took their place beside the manufacturers in public life. The general history of Sheffield at this time followed the experience normal between 1770 and 1870 when the full effects of the Industrial Revolution were to be seen in all their splendour and squalor. Sheffield steel men worked and experimented with new methods of production. Armour plate rolling and the production of guns turned the town into Britain's arsenal and by 1911 the little riverside hamlet had grown into the fifth city of England and the largest in Yorkshire.

The Municipality:
Running a modern city is big business calling for well-balanced judgment, expert management and professional and technical skills of the highest order. Sheffield City Council of today has over 23,000 employees and 64,000 separate properties under its control, all built upon a tradition of self-government dating back to the 13th century.

In 1297, Thomas de Furnival 's charter conferred a certain degree of freedom on the Free Tenants, releasing them from "manorial dues and services", and it was de Furnival who secured for the town the confirmation of market and fair rights. In 1554, after religious disputes had created difficulties for the Free Tenants, Queen Mary I granted a Royal Charter incorporating the Twelve Capital Burgesses and Commonalty of the Town and Parish of Sheffield, who co-operated with the Free Tenants in many secular spheres. These bodies, together with the officials of the parish's six townships and the Cutlers' Company, managed the town's affairs until its rapid growth in the eighteenth century outstripped their finances and their powers.

The Town Trustees, by which name the Free Tenants are now known, are still actively in existence and possessed of considerable funds from which substantial grants are made to the University and to charities ; they were regulated by a decree in Chancery in 1681 and by subsequent Acts of Parliament. They helped in the improvement of the navigation of the River Don and in the making of turnpikes, and, as early as 1734, undertook the lighting of the town with oil lamps. They were also instrumental in securing the passage of the Act of 1818, which set up Commissioners for the better policing, lighting and cleansing of Sheffield. But urgent problems of health and sanitation remained until the desire for reform throughout the country resulted in the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act (by that Reformed Parliament in which Sheffield had been represented for the first time by two members) in 1835. Under this Act, Sheffield obtained in 1843 a Charter of Incorporation as a Borough. From this date the city's local government as we now know it began. In 1888, Sheffield's corporate activities and its population of some three hundred thousand fully justified its acquisition of the status of County Borough, followed in 1893 by elevation to the dignity of a city. Sheffield became an Assize Town in 1955.

A vast and efficient network of services is administered by the City Council. Colleges and schools of all kinds, comprehensive transport and water undertakings, a health service of wide ramifications, police and fire-fighting services, housing of outstanding quality and design, a direct building department handling millions of pounds worth of work each year, public markets and baths, well-kept and well-lighted roads, an extremely efficient printing department, the most up-to-date methods of sewage disposal with one of the largest de-watering plants in the world, some of the finest parks and sports grounds in the country, libraries, museums and art galleries, cemeteries, a crematorium and burial grounds, civil defence, these are some of the Council's many responsibilities.

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Transport and Communications:

Railways & Waterways:
Sheffield is on the main railway routes and has frequent direct services to London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Bristol, the West of England and South Wales, in addition to cross country services to Manchester, Hull and Grimsby. Several well known trains serve the city including the " Master Cutler " to London, the " Devonian " and the " Cornishman" to the West of England and the "Thames - Clyde" and "Waverley" express to Glasgow and Edinburgh respectively. A comprehensive modernisation scheme covering the Sheffield area is in progress, including a new marshalling yard and diesel depot at Tinsley, and a new freight depot at Grimesthorpe, which has provided Sheffield, centre of the heaviest goods traffic in the United Kingdom, with one of the busiest and most modern groups of freight installations in the country and will enable regular services to be operated to and from London, the West of England, Hull, the East and North-east coasts, Carlisle and Scotland. Goods are also brought to the city from Goole and Hull by the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation Canal of British Waterways.

Road and Air services:
The City Council's Transport Department operates an efficient service by a fleet of 820 of the most modern types of motor-buses, covering some 27 million miles annually, and during the summer months arranges tours of the city and its nearby" lake district ". Bus routes extending beyond the city to as far as Leeds and Manchester are controlled by the Sheffield Joint Omnibus Committee, composed of representatives of the Corporation and the British Railways Board. The nearest airport is at Manchester, but a site has been reserved in Sheffield for a helicopter station less than 2 miles from the centre of the city. Landing facilities are already available on a temporary landing pad. The City Council proposes to establish an airport for Sheffield and its area, and the site suggested adjoins the junction of the M1, M18 and A57, some 8 miles from the City centre with direct motorway connections to the City.

Roads and Motorways:
A comprehensive road system is being developed in and adjacent to the city. Part of an inner Ring Road has been completed and work is well in hand on the Civic Circle, which will bypass the hard core of the city centre. The Central Bus Station, near the Midland Railway Station, will be linked to the Civic Centre and one of the main shopping areas by an escalator and subway. The Sheffield-Leeds section of the London-Yorkshire Motorway (M1) will pass through part of the city at Tinsley, where it will cross the Don Valley on a two-tiered viaduct, the Motorway on top and an all-purpose trunk road underneath. The Sheffield Parkway, part of which is already constructed, will connect the city centre directly with a junction on the Motorway at Catcliffe. Motorway and Parkway are expected to be completed in 1968.

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The Industries of Sheffield:

The reputation of Sheffield rests mainly upon special types and outstanding quality of products in five staple industries, - steel, tools, engineering, cutlery and silverware. The name of the city has become synonymous with quality, craftsmanship, and traditional skill.

The Cutlery trades:
Though overshadowed in recent years by the gigantic growth of the steel industry, the cutlery trades are the oldest and have contributed much to the development of the others. Their origin is still not exactly known. The surrounding hills are rich in mineral products necessary for metal working, and early documents show that iron was worked, coal was mined, and smithies yielded profits in the district from the twelfth century onwards. In the fourteenth century there were smiths and cutlers in Sheffield, Handsworth and Ecclesfield, and Chaucer made his well-known reference in The Canterbury Tales to the " Sheffelde thwitel " [the common knife] which the Miller of Trumpington '' baar" in his hose. In the fifteenth century are found the earliest references to the grinding wheels established on the five Sheffield rivers. By the time of Queen Elizabeth the knives, sickles, scissors, scythes and shears made in Sheffield and North Derbyshire were nationally bought and valued.

At the end of the eighteenth century the English cutlery industry had become a monopoly of Sheffield, whose products were used in the homes, workshops and forests of Europe and the United States.

For "cutlery" does not mean only table ware, but a whole series of cutting implements and a wide range of knives for special purposes. The original "thwitel" which served indifferently as table knife, tool and weapon, had developed such wide variations as the spring knife, the carver, the razor, the bowie knife, the surgeon's lancet. Those products in which Sheffield still stands pre-eminent are made by workmen who used methods which have stood the test of time, and whose specialised skill is almost an inherited quality. When the parts of a four-bladed penknife are assembled, 154 distinct operations are carried out by skilled men whose forerunners brought the basic processes to perfection two centuries ago. Sheffield knives are a vital need in most industries and particularly in those which deal with necessities one instance is agriculture, for knives are needed at all stages of food production, both in the raising and reaping of crops and the dressing of carcasses. Among Sheffield's very special knives of today are high quality carvers, and machetes used by tropical workers. Fine scissors and surgical instruments are in the same tradition ; the old-fashioned razors for which the city is famous are still in demand, but the trade in safety razor blades is, of course, now much greater. The Cutlery and Allied Trades' Research Association keeps Sheffield a world leader in cutlery and allied products.

Hand cutting tools:
A whole range of cutting tools developed naturally along with the knives. It is not always easy to decide where cutlery ends and cutting tools begin ; it is roughly indicated by the fact that while the scythesmiths and the sicklesmiths were original members of the Cutlers' Company, the awlbladesmiths and the filesmiths were only admitted sixty years afterwards. The saw trade was separate from cutlery from its beginning in the eighteenth century, and edge-tool making was a separate industry by about 1780. From these trades developed a whole range of tools for joiners and similar workers who require cutting tools, and the really skilled man always prefers a Sheffield tool today. Tools of the same essential nature were evolved in more recent years for use with machine methods, and to meet the complicated needs of workers using new materials. Knives are made for all types of cutting machinery. There are over 3,000 types and sizes of files, from heavy instruments for railway rail filing to the precision types required by dentists, jewellers and similar users. Saws in almost as great variety - handsaws, bandsaws, hacksaws, circular saws, friction discs, granite and diamond saws, swage saws and others - testify to the value of the skilled sawsmithm for in the tensioning of the blades no machinery can replace the judgment of men.

Steel:
Though Sheffield's products in iron and steel and the skill of its craftsmen had been known for centuries, the modern steel industry on which the city's fame now mainly rests only began with the invention of the crucible process by Benjamin Huntsman, who settled in Handsworth (now within Sheffield) about 1740. His steel was of unequalled uniformity of quality, and its use revolutionised the making of tools. Though only comparatively small quantities of the steel could be melted at one time because the crucibles had to be lifted from the furnace and the molten metal teemed by hand, the manufacturers of Sheffield, especially the makers of saws, files and springs, so effectively built upon the foundations provided by Huntsman that by 1835 Sheffield was already established as the centre of tool-steel manufacture in Britain.

From that time, the steel industry has developed on the lines of the manufacture of alloy and special steels for special purposes. Only a fraction of Sheffield's output is constructional steel such as that used for reinforcing concrete, the city's primary concern is with steels which have special characteristics. The types made are numerous, but they can be divided into a few wide groups, low and medium carbon steels, high carbon and high quality alloy tool steels, special alloy constructional and die steels, stainless and heat-resisting steels, steels from which permanent magnets for the electrical industries are made (these include alloys which are not true steels, but which are made principally in Sheffield by the same processes), 11-14 per cent manganese steel, which has the property of becoming harder on the surface the more it is abraded, and steels for use at very low temperatures.

A measure of the city's unique place in the steel industry of Britain is provided by the fact that whereas steel is usually sold by the ton, much of Sheffield's output is priced by the pound.

The Sheffield steels which serve the varied and increasingly complex needs of industry have been produced by a combination of the skill and craftsmanship of the workers and the genius of experimenters and metallurgists. Living within the hills that cradle the city, the early workers held clannishly together, observing and experimenting in their own ways, and handing down their secrets from father to son, and the judgment of melters and foremen is still trusted and needed, though the scientists' instruments and laboratory techniques have replaced many of the old methods. Pride in making good the city's proud boast that the words "Sheffield, England" on any product are a guarantee of quality is no small part of the workers' equipment.

The men who succeeded Huntsman were continual experimenters. First by keen observation and process of trial and error, in later years by formal and methodical research in laboratories, these alloy and special steels were evolved in the workshops of Sheffield and new methods of making them adapted from elsewhere. Sir Henry Bessemer brought his converter, the first major invention after Huntsman's crucible, to the great workshop valley of Attercliffe in 1859, and with the help of Mushet's Spiegeleisen process made possible the production of a mild all-purposes steel in large quantities. The Siemens open-hearth furnace, the converter process invented by Alexandre Tropenas, the electric arc furnace, the high-frequency induction furnace, have taken their place in due course, according to the needs of the individual concern and the activities of its metallurgists and research chemists. Low-frequency induction melting has since been introduced into the city and high-frequency induction heating is helping heat-treatment and other processes in the manufacture of Sheffield's steels and steel products. Rapid strides are being made in the use of vacuum melting, consumable electrode melting and vacuum casting and de-gassing, by which exceptionally pure steels for exacting duties are assured.

Among the more famous Sheffield men are Sir Robert A. Hadfield, inventor of manganese steel, Harry Brearley, who first made a "stainless" cutlery steel, and H. C. Sorby, who originated the science of metallography ; while many metallurgists from elsewhere worked at times in Sheffield or, like Robert Forester Mushet, who invented self-hardening steel, influenced the city's industrial development. These owed to others, and bequeathed to others, ideas and experiments which have played an important part in the stirring record of the production of Sheffield's steels.

Other names, too, are household words in and outside Sheffield. John Brown, whose great shipbuilding establishments fringe the Clyde, built his first furnace in Sheffield, and a vast range of workshops still exist as a tribute to his memory along the River Don. The names of Firth, Cammell, Vickers, Jessop, Hadfield, Sanderson, Osborn, Edgar Allen and many others-builders of the modern steel industry-will be remembered as long as steel exists to serve the purposes of man. The great radio telescope at Jodrell Bank and others are recent examples of Sheffield skill in design and craftsmanship.

This unique record of a city's intense devotion to the development of a great industry has resulted in the production of a diverse range of steels suitable for an immense variety of uses. Improvements have been brought about by adding elements such as chromium, nickel, tungsten, cobalt, vanadium, molybdenum, columbium, selenium and titanium to ordinary materials for steelmaking. The finished products have greater resistance to stresses or resistance to corrosion, greater cutting powers or greater endurance. Without the discovery of alloy steels, many engineering products could not have been developed. High speed steel tools allow metals to be cut at several times the speeds of former days special heat-resisting steels, produced in Sheffield's laboratories, made high-temperature applications and the jet engine possible. Malleable types of stainless steel are widely used in the chemical, brewing and food industries. Large quantities of stainless steel sheet and strip are now being produced here by the continuous process, and the centrifugal casting of stainless and heat-resisting steels has assumed a place of importance.

In Sheffield itself, a vast range of two distinct types of products made of steel is manufactured machinery parts, and cutting tools for use in machine tools and machines.

In the former class are all kinds of plant for steelmaking, quarrying, lime-burning, chemical making, mining, cement making ; forgings and castings of special parts, large and small ; solid rolled wheels ; axles ; points and crossings for railways ; crankshafts propellor shafts ; springs ; and so on. Among the most spectacular are heavy forgings. Presses ranging up to 7,000 tons are in use for the production of hollow forgings, made from a single ingot weighing up to 300 tons, and capable of resisting the very high working pressures encountered in hydrogenation and chemical plants, etc. Special welding methods now enable even larger boiler-drums to be made from two hollow forgings welded together. The Sheffield rolling mills, forging presses, and other plant required for working steel into forms usable by industry, are a considerable part of the country's total equipment.

Sheffield has contributed notably towards plant for peaceful atomic-energy development. Springs, for the making of which Sheffield is the principal centre, evoke a different kind of admiration altogether. Laminated carriage springs, coil springs, of spiral, volute or conical type, and leaf springs, are all made here ; and materials other than steel, such as phosphor bronze, nickel alloy, german silver and brass are used in this branch of the industry. The highly original automatic machinery for the production of springs was exclusively designed in Sheffield ; and the Spring Manufacturers' Research Association is making valuable contributions to continued progress.

In the second class are engineers' tools, twist drills and other kinds of metal-cutting tools ; cutting parts for agricultural and similar machinery ; reamers, countersinking tools, screwing tackle ; tools for lathes, boring, planing, slotting and shaping. Hundreds of thousands of twist drills made from the finest high speed and carbon steels are manufactured, and the latest development, the butt-welded drill, originated here and is now produced by many firms. A special type for drilling austenitic manganese steel, which formerly could not be drilled commercially, is a Sheffield invention. Precision ground form tools, in which the highest degree of accuracy is required, with tolerances frequently as low as 1-10,000 -10,000 of an inch, are extensively made. Magnets enter into so many modern mechanisms that the demand is steadily increasing, and literally millions of magnets a year are produced in the city for radio and television applications, speedometers, miners safety lamps, electric meters, clocks and magnetos. Important research work is continually being carried out in Sheffield by the Permanent Magnet Association.

An industry of great value to British manufacture is the making of marks. Most marking devices are made of steel, although other metals are used for component parts, and the list of varieties includes hand stamps, press stamps, logotypes, rotary dies, interchangeable steel type, hand and machine type holders, marking machines, engraved moulds, embossing dies, burning brands and branding machines. Sheffield plays a prominent part in supplying micrometers and other precise measuring instruments, as well as other engineering tools.

The making of material directly for war purposes is what is regarded in Sheffield as a recent trade it is not more than a hundred years old. It began when two Sheffield firms, right at the beginning of the era of ironclad battleships, began to make rolled armour-plate to replace the hammered kind first used. Great strides were made in improving the efficiency of armour in a few years, and one or two other firms took up the work. By 1914, a large proportion of the British fleet was protected by armour-plate made in Sheffield. A parallel interest in guns and shells had naturally developed, as the armour was evolved and tested.

It has not been possible to deal adequately with Sheffield steel within the limits of these pages, or to mention more than a few of the products associated with it. Progress is continuous and is aided by many highly developed research establishments and special libraries, including those of the British Iron and Steel Research Association.

Parallel to the production of high-grade steels is Sheffield's development of sintered carbides for use on tipped cutting tools and in certain dies. These non-ferrous carbides or " hard metals " are manufactured in large quantities. Another non-ferrous advance in the steel industry is the production and manipulation of the highly important (but expensive) element titanium, which is extensively used in jet aircraft engines because of the lightness and the heat-resisting properties of the metal and its alloys. Recent ventures include the production of thorium-a heavy metal of importance in nuclear physics-and the development of ceramic cutting tools, in which ceramic material takes the place of sintered carbide.

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