Sheffield Street Food History and the Cutlery Quarter

Sheffield was the cutlery capital of the world for two centuries. At its peak the city produced the majority of the world’s knives, scissors and razors. The industry was organised around small workshops – known as wheel or grinding shops – clustered in the area now called the Cutlery Quarter, centred on the streets around Norfolk Street and Sidney Street. The workers were known as Little Mesters: independent craftsmen who rented wheel space and supplied the large cutlery companies with finished blades.

Cutlery Works takes its name from the industrial function of its host building. The factory produced cutlery until the 1980s. The conversion to a food hall has preserved the industrial character – exposed steelwork, high ceilings, original floor surfaces – while giving the space a new purpose. Eating a Korean rice bowl in a building that made Sheffield cutlery for a hundred years is a very Sheffield experience.

Portland Works on Randall Street is Sheffield’s last working cutlery factory in the original industrial mode. The building was saved from demolition by community action and now houses a mix of small cutlery makers, artists and craftspeople. The working cutlery production continues alongside the arts and crafts units. Open days are held annually and provide access to one of the most historically significant surviving industrial buildings in the city.

Sheffield’s food scene has grown in old buildings because old buildings were available, affordable and characterful. The decline of heavy industry left a building stock that the city’s creative economy has moved into. The best Sheffield food venues are not designed spaces. They are inherited spaces made good. That difference – between built and adapted, between design and discovery – is what gives Sheffield its food scene character.