Butcher Works & Freeman College

This weekend, lots of venues were open in Sheffield for the Heritage Open Weekend.  I love this event as they open doors that you never usually get to see behind.  

My blog lurker pal Nic and I decided to make it a full day out on Saturday, so started with a gorgeous "Eggs Benedict" breakfast at the new Tamper Coffee Cafe on Arundel Street - highly recommended.

 The cafe set the scene for the day really as it has been converted from another old workshop in the city.  They have done a fabulous job of it.

 They have a takeaway, an indoor eating place and they also use the courtyard for outdoor eating too.  I love the way they have reused this great old space.

 Our first port of call, was The Butcher Works across the road.  This was one of the first of the larger workshops that the council decided to find a new use for instead of knocking down.  The gent who showed us around was one of archaeologists who worked on the conversion project.  He showed us some really interesting parts of the exterior and showed us how it would have been added to over the years.

 It is now lovely apartments and also houses some exclusive workshops too, but the big secret that I didn't know beforehand was that some area's have been left untouched.

 They have done a great job of renovating the brick work as these workshops were thrown up in a hurry and the bricks were always substandard.

 One of the rooms left untouched is the grinding room - it has a spooky feeling - making you feel like you have literally just stepped back in time.  they do have plans to restore this further, but at the moment it is left as they found it.  Its amazing.

 I loved the very old pair of bellows in here too.

 After our tour, we wandered to the next building which houses the Freeman Clollege which is part of the Ruskin Mill Trust.  Student who have special needs, can learn skills here that are really unique.  This converted old workshop is stunning and the environment and atmosphere in the college is wonderful.  It is truly a unique place.

 We watched one one man making spoons.  The cutlery they produce is beautiful.

 My pal and I also had a go at weaving and needle felting (we didn't make these I hasten to add).

 They have a gallery where you can view the students work.  It was a very welcoming place - we loved it.

 The building is also home to the Fusion Cafe (which I believe is vegetarian) and where you can see an example of the vaulted ceilings that they had to build when they installed the heavy grinding stones on higher floors.

I love this area of Sheffield and yet its an area that many have never explored.  It's full of lovely surprises.

Petworth

On Saturday afternoon we trundled a few miles from where my friend lives through gorgeous little villages until we reached Petworth.  Petworth is very pretty and on such a beautiful afternoon reminded me slightly of a french village.

 It has some very gorgeous shops and antique centres.  We wandered around a huge and stunningly beautiful house that was full of treasures from France.  The prices made our eyes water!

 I loved this artist painting at the end of the passage way, and we admired the many vintage cars that kept driving by.  The village is near Goodwood race track and they are holding a vintage rally in a couple of weeks time, but I think many of the locals own these gorgeous vehicles.

 The gent who got out of this could have stepped straight out of The Waltons - he had a checked shirt and dungarees on.

 After a saunter around the village, we moved on to the big house.  We didn't have time to look around inside, but it was so nice that a walk around the parkland.

It is a gorgeous part of the world and one that we need to explore more of.

Godalming

Hubby and I have just spent a lovely weekend with a very dear school friend.  I met P on the first day at comprehensive school in 1971 and we immediately hit it off.  Our lives have followed different paths, and we have had a couple of spells when we didn't meet up for a while, but we always stayed in touch by letter, phone, email, text and now facebook.  Whenever we meet up, it is just like we have not been apart and we talk non stop.

 She lives in the very pretty town of Godalming in Surrey.  I've always loved this little town.  It has a fabulous little High Street and all the amenities are within walking distance.  There is always something going on.  It has a railway station with direct links to London yet it is on the edge of some of the most wonderful countryside.

 You may have seen the town as it featured in "The Holiday" with Kate Winslet and Jude Law.

 My pal and I are well matched when it comes to shopping and we did every Charity Shop on the High Street and the fabulous car boot sale in Guildford.  We have the same taste too and split up for a while at the car boot sale, only to meet up again having bought the same items!

 We wandered around the old part of the town - so very pretty.

 And also through the gardens designed by Gertude Jeykll - in memory of George Phillips who was killed on the Titanic.

 I have spent a lot of time around here in the past - visiting my friend, and I also worked in the area in the early 1980's when the company I worked for (the "proper office") had it's head office in nearby Guildford.  I also spent a week on the river in a narrow boat once too.

I have some lovely memories of this place - time spent with the best of friends.

Modern History

I discovered by accident that they have some great events happening at the Manor Lodge Discovery Centre in Sheffield, and so on Monday night I decided to try the "Last of the Little Mesters" talk by Peter Machan.  I learned so much!  Peter is a retired headmaster who now works at Sheffield Manor and has a great interest in historical Sheffield - especially the cutlery trade. Did you know that Sheffield was once famous for cutlery making as well as steel?   His father had worked for one of the big blade making companies.  The "Little Mesters" (or masters) were almost all self employed craftsmen who worked in the many hundreds of workshops built right in the city centre - of which many still remain - empty or repurposed usually.  A fair few have been turned into nightclubs and bars or student housing.  Only a handful of these craftsmen remain today - most in their late 80's.

 Peter had been photographing the Little Mesters at work from the mid 1970's to the mid 1980's when all the bigger cutlery companies eventually went out of business.  I remember the first time I saw "Made in Taiwan" on cutlery and thought it looked very strange.  When the businesses closed down, Peter went skip diving as they cleared the premises and now is custodian of some historically important photographs, ledgers and other artifacts that would have otherwise ended up as landfill.  He was also bequeathed some amazing pieces (like the one below) when many of the lovely chaps in his photographs died.  Close up, they are amazing works of art.  It struck me when he was showing the pictures, and telling the stories, that this "history" was very much in my lifetime.  Whilst it makes me feel ancient, it also makes me very proud to have been living in the city when this industry was still alive.  Peter's talk was very humorous, enlightening but also very very moving.  The cutlers of Sheffield were ordinary working people, but with extraordinary talent and skills - so very underrated as well as underpaid. He also touched on the associated trades, like the men who made the stamps for the blades and the women who acid etched the names on them.

I learnt that the official (and this is real!) job title for the chap who put the left and right handed parts of scissors together was a "Scissor puter togetherer".  That the term "buff" (The buffer girls polished the blades till they shone) comes from the fact that they used neck leather from Buffalo's to do this.  And much much more.  Peter's talk (and he also writes a lot of books on the subject) was a great testimony to the men and women of Sheffield who worked extremely hard in poor conditions but sent a marvellous little piece of Sheffield  to every far flung corner of the world.

If you are local, the Portland Works is open on the Heritage Open Day weekend on the 15th September and you can see one of the remaining Little Mesters in his workshop on that day.  It is a fascinating place to look around and I know you will love it.

Vintage Rally

For many years, the big house in Wentworth has been a sleeping giant, but now, the owner is trying to bring the place back to life.  This weekend they held their second Vintage Car Rally - we went along to take a look.  I bet this old place has seen plenty of fancy cars parked in front of it in the past!

 I'll show you some of my faves - mainly based on colour it has to be said!

 I always drool over the campervans.  I dream of owning one, but hubby always points out their bad points - he's such a killjoy.

 I have to admit that at 6 foot 6inches, he might not fit in one!

 And he certainly wouldn't fit in this - but we did both really love it.

 And I was majorly in love with this fab American car with side tray of food!

 He could have done with a sandwich me thinks!

 We loved these dinky cars too

 And I have always wanted to trundle around France in one of these.  A girl can dream.