John Petty

The demolition of John Petty’s works in Garden Street, Sheffield, in 1986, about 100 years after the firm first moved there, was arguably the single biggest act of wanton destruction of the industrial heritage of the city – ever (and let’s face it, there is huge competition for that accolade. Medieval corn mill owned by the council? Put a bulldozer through it).

Petty’s was just the most complete and unchanged Victorian workshop complex I have ever seen. By the 1980s so much of this type of old works had already gone that surviving examples were priceless. But the new owners just wanted a cleared site for their land portfolio, and perhaps wary of architectural interest in the building they quickly put the bulldozer through it before anybody could begin to argue for trying to save it (although campaigning should have started long before).
I was scouting round with my camera and discovered entry was possible over the back wall via a condom and needle strewn car park (this was a very dodgy area of town!) and was amazed by how intact the works were, despite a few people having clearly been scouting about. I was also told the Industrial Museum had already been allowed entry to save anything they wanted. After taking photographs we began carefully nosing around and actually found quite a few unused cutlery labels which we rescued. But my eye was drawn to the astonishing half size cupboard doors which lined one packing room. Varnished timber, these had been stencilled with all the different names of the firm’s products so staff could pick orders quickly. I decided they were far too interesting to be destroyed, so we dismantled all eight of these and somehow got them over the back wall and into my old Honda Civic hatchback. Careful peeling back of old paper from the works benches revealed these to be sheets of hand made paper from a mill on the Rivelin in Sheffield, each still with the original label. They had been saved from deliveries and recycled to keep the workbenches clean. We rescued as many of these as we could. There were also samples of some of the niche industrial knives the firm once made. There were some full size doors as well but these were simply too much for the car. However I did rescue a slightly smaller door which was just marked “warehouse”. I will try and get snaps of these done anon.
I stuffed all this into the loft back home and have finally got a set of the labels scanned! I will be putting sets up for sale on ebay later. They do look amazing framed up. They are marked up John Petty and Sons, Perth Works, Garden Street, Sheffield and were packaging labels made to adorn plain brown card boxes of Magnetic Razors, Magnetic Pocket Knives, Razors, Cutlery, and Celebrated Table Knives. The designs look to be circa 1900, but these were probably printed in the 1920s. The barrel was the firm’s trade mark, granted in 1791 and was stamped onto the blades of all their products. We did potter back a few weeks later for another look around and to take some more pictures as it had been very overcast the previous time, but by then it was too late. Any guilt at having rescued items which might be better left as part of the fabric were gone. The flattened site was still empty 30 years later but today this area of the city has fallen prey to speculative student flat developments and massive blocks are shooting up, so I suspect this is what has since happened. Frankly it’s just too depressing to even go and look.