George Barnsley (1810-1874) was born into a Sheffield cutlery family on 2 March 1810.  He was trained as a file maker and started his own file business in 1836 in Wheeldon Street, Brookhill.  In the Census (1851), he was enumerated in Upper Allen Street, when he described himself as a file manufacturer and steel refiner, employing 43 men. In that year, he moved his business to a factory in Cornish Street, Neepsend. Cornish Works (not to be confused with the nearby Cornish Place factory of James Dixon & Sons) enabled Barnsley to extend his product range to include butchers’ and trade knives.  In particular, he became renowned for his tools for the leather and shoe trade.  A specialist range of shoe knives was made for the clicker (foreman shoemaker) and leatherworker. These knives were used for hacking, paring, lining, breasting, and feathering.  Illustrations from the firm’s trade catalogues are reproduced in Salaman (1986)¹.  Trade marks included ‘A’ and a shoe; and ‘ROSE’.

George Barnsley had four sons: George (1837-1895), Joseph (1842-1888), Arthur (1851-1889), and Henry (1847-1922).  As they came of age, they joined the family firm, which became ‘& Sons’. In 1871, Barnsley’s employed 130 workers. The founder died at his residence Oxford Street, Upperthorpe, on 27 May 1874, aged 64. He left under £14,000.  George Jun., who had joined his father when he was fourteen as a traveller, became the dominant individual at the firm.  Joseph and Arthur died prematurely within a year of each other: the latter on 16 June 1888, aged 46, from a long-standing liver complaint at Oakwood House, Taptonville Crescent. His estate was £11,250. Arthur died on 29 July 1889, aged 38, from Bright’s disease.  Notwithstanding, George Jun. and his brother Henry continued to expand the firm. In 1881, Henry told the Census that the firm employed 210 workers.

George Jun. became a Town Councillor, Alderman, JP, and Master Cutler (1883).  He was regarded as a typical Yorkshireman, who was ‘bluff and outspoken, with a hatred of concealment and double dealing’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 10 June 1895). He died on 3 June 1895, aged 58, from a haemorrhage of the stomach and liver at his residence Oakvale, Collegiate Crescent. He was buried (alongside his father and brothers, Joseph and Arthur) in Fulwood, leaving £9,926. The surviving brother, Henry, took the business into the twentieth century, when it sold tool steels and tools. He died on 2 March 1922, leaving £27,553.

Henceforth, trading conditions became more difficult. According to the company’s historians (Bell and Barnsley, 2010²), ‘The overall feeling  ... is one of struggle.’ In 1948, the firm became a limited liability company and five years later acquired the assets of Ball Bros. But the hundred-strong workforce began to dwindle. One of the last family partners in the business was Colonel George Barnsley OBE, who died at his home in Collegiate Crescent on 30 March 1958.  He was aged 83 and had served in the Boer War. He left £28,722. In the 1960s and 1970s, competition grew from Japan and India, which Barnsley’s was unable to counter with its traditional methods and antiquated machinery. The firm acquired James Oxley in 1968, but five years later file manufacture ended at the company with the loss of 60 jobs. In the early 1970s, key managers left and within a decade only a handful of workers still occupied the factory. The decaying building closed in 2004.  

Amongst the family descendants who left were Fred Barnsley and his son, Colin. They bought Woodware Repetitions Ltd (an established manufacturer of tool handles) and moved into the old works of John Clarke in Mowbray Street, which was across the River Don from Barnsley’s. Woodware took over Barnsley’s stock  and in 2007 re-registered the name ‘George Barnsley & Sons Ltd’. Woodware’s speciality was woodturning, but it continued to market shoe knives with the famous ‘A’ mark.

For further information on George Barnsley & Sons, see the author’s Directory of Sheffield Tool Manufacturers, 1740-2018 (2020).

^1. Salaman, RA  Dictionary of Leather Working Tools c1700-1950 and the Tools of the Allied Trades (London, 1986) 

^2. Bell, Pauline C, and Barnsley, Colin, Forging History: The Story of George Barnsley & Sons (Sheffield, 2010)