Description

SHEFFIELD

784-1/6/612 RANDALL STREET
12-DEC-95 (Northwest side)
PORTLAND WORKS

(Formerly listed as:
DANIEL STREET
79
PORTLAND WORKS)

II*
Purpose-built cutlery works, now workshops. Built in late 1870s with minor early C20 additions. Red brick with stone and white brick dressings, brick stacks, slate roofs.
PLAN: Courtyard plan on obtuse angled corner site located at the junction of two roads. The front range curves round the north side of Randall Street and Hill Street, with a workshop range abutting either end running back flanking the east and west sides of the yard, the narrow west range angled to follow the angled site boundary. At the rear of the yard is a deep workshop range with three original buildings projecting into the courtyard from its midpoint. On the west side of the yard is an octagonal industrial chimney. Within the yard are a number of later buildings.
EXTERIOR: Front building of two storeys, with plinth, dentilated wooden eaves, coped gables. Covered cart entrance close to the road junction separates the front elevation into two functional areas. Cart entrance and room above share a decorative ashlar surround with rusticated jambs, a deep lintel and round-arched triple hung-sash window without glazing bars, both flanked by panelled pilasters, and a rendered gabled parapet with the works' name flanked by panelled pedestals with ball finials. Ridge stack. On either side of the first-floor pilasters is a single narrow hung-sash window without glazing bars. Office and showroom range to right, in Randall Street, of fifteen regular bays with stone sill bands with a cogged first-floor band. Ground floor windows have white brick segmental heads and first-floor windows have white brick round-arched heads. Hung-sash windows with two-over-two glazing bars. Beneath upper windows are recessed panels of decorative brickwork. In sixth bay to right of cart entrance is main entrance doorway. The panelled double door with overlight is raised by three steps and set in an ashlar surround with a cornice supported on fluted brackets. Two ridge stacks and a gable stack. The yard elevation has a shallow two-storey wing projecting into the yard housing toilets. Range curving round into Hill Street contains workshops and possible house. Bays are not clearly defined, with irregularly spaced windows. Stone sill bands, first-floor cogged band, window detailing as to east side of cart entrance except for two ground-floor windows and a rectangular barred opening at the west end of the range, which have chamfered stone sills and lintels. One original doorway with overlight and white brick segmental head, one window altered to make a doorway and two inserted doorways. Three ridge stacks. The yard elevation has an original external cantilevered stone staircase to the first floor, and two light multi-paned casements.
Workshop range to west side of yard: Three storeys of brick in English bond with a double-pitched slate roof, the south-west gable built up and over the street frontage building. The ground floor contains nine individual hand forge shops, many with a degree of alteration to the original door and window arrangement. The northernmost forge shop retains its original appearance in most complete form, with a stable-type split door with an adjoining two light, small-paned casement window sharing a common wooden frame under a single lintel. The lintels are all rolled steel joists. The first and second floors have eighteen bays of closely spaced two light multi-paned casements. The windows have shaped brick sills, those on the first floor with segmental arched heads, with straight heads to the second-floor windows which are situated directly under the eaves. The fifth bay in from the south-west gable contains an inserted loading door and hoist. There is an original external stone staircase at the north end of the building. Brick eaves stacks to rear wall.
Workshop range to rear of yard: Deep range of three storeys, but reduced to two storeys in the central section due to a fire. Brick with stone sill bands and a double-pitched slate roof. Ground-floor elevation has been altered by the modern insertion of wide openings with metal rollers. The first and second floors have closely spaced two light multi-paned casements, some of which have lost original glazing, with segmental arched brick lintels. Brick ridge stacks. Tall single-storey building projecting into the yard from midpoint of the rear range, with lower single-storey building attached to each side. There are later alterations to the central and eastern buildings.
Truncated octagonal industrial chimney on west side of yard.
Workshop range to east side of yard: Three storey building with partial basement at south end. Built of brick in English Garden Wall bond, with a blind rear wall, mono-pitch slate roof, stone coping, shaped stone kneelers, and brick roof and ridge stacks. Courtyard elevation of nineteen bays with closely spaced two-light multi-paned casements on all floors, many on the ground floor having lost original frames. The windows have segmental arched heads, with stone sills and partial sill band over basement on the ground floor and sill bands on the upper floors. Some alteration of windows into doorways on ground floor. External staircase at north end of building.
Later additions: In early C20 a two-storeyed brick workshop was built against and over the south end of the single-storey buildings in the yard, and a workshop was built on rolled steel joists at first-floor level against the north side of the cart entrance. Freestanding single-storey brick workshop to south of chimney.
INTERIOR: Only the part of the ground floor of the rear range and the single-storey central building projecting into the yard from this range were inspected internally. Inside, the ground floor is constructed with brick fireproof ceilings, supported by iron columns and rolled steel joists. Midway along the range is a room where, unlike the rest of the building, the four fireproof bays ran transversely. A large bearing box in one of the side walls suggests that this was the engine house. To the west of the engine house are two four-bay rooms. The east side was not inspected. At the south end of the central building is a large arched brick opening, probably a fireplace arch of a reheat hearth for a power forge housing steam hammers.
HISTORY: The 1:1056 Ordnance Survey map of 1851 shows the Highfield area of Sheffield as undeveloped fields at this time. Portland Works is first mentioned in a trade directory of 1879 and appears largely in the form it retains to the present day on the 1:500 Ordnance Survey map of 1889. The works was occupied by R F Mosley, a cutlery manufacturer, whose firm was still listed at the premises over 40 years later in 1910. Recently the works is in diverse multiple occupation as workshops.
Portland Works has group value with Stag Works (q.v.) located nearby.

SOURCES: '"One Great Workshop": The Buildings of the Shefiield Metal Trades', English Heritage, February 2000 (unpublished analysis of research), English Heritage 2001 '"One Great Workshop": The Buildings of the Sheffield Metal Trades', London, `Portland Works, Randall Street, Sheffield' NBR No.98268, 1998.

Summary of Importance
Portland Works is a large integrated cutlery works built in the 1870s. The complex is an extremely good and complete example of a large purpose-built integrated cutlery works dating largely from a single 1870s building phase with a well designed layout for this building type. The works was mechanised, with evidence for a steam engine, but there are also unpowered workshop ranges, illustrating the fact that Sheffield based its reputation upon the supremacy of traditional methods; it was said in 1879 that `the highest excellence can be attained only by the employment of intelligent hand labour'. This type of complex is very distinctive to the industrial identity of Sheffield, which, at this time was known throughout the world as a centre of excellence in the manufacturing and processing of steel. Portland Works is an important survival which demonstrates the layout of such a complex, highlights the limited use of power in the cutlery manufacturing process, and retains both hand forges and steam grinding rooms, extremely rare survivals of building types related to specific processes, with probably fewer than five sites in Sheffield now retaining evidence of both. These characteristics, together with the degree of completeness of survival make this site of particular importance and justify its upgrading to Grade II*.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Portland Works at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q7232079

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

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  Yorkshire West Riding: Sheffield and the South (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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