Established in about 1770 at Hawley Croft, this enterprise was one of the first Sheffield Plate firms.  The partners were George Ashforth (c.1727-1813) and Samuel Ellis (bapt.  1742-1825).  Little is known about Ashforth’s early life.  However, it is interesting to note that in the Sheffield directory (1774), Elizabeth Ashforth & Co was listed as a cutler and plated manufacturer at Holy Croft.  The trade mark included the letters ‘G A’ [George Ashforth?].  Samuel Ellis’ grandson (also named Samuel) was able to trace his family line to Isaac Ellis, a Nonconformist cutler, who was born in 1692.  Isaac’s son, Samuel (1719-1765), another cutler, was the father of the Samuel in Ashforth, Ellis & Co.   The latter Samuel was trained in his father’s business:

But being a fair draughtsman, and possessing some artistic taste, he made an addition to that trade by the cutting of presses for the pressing of horn handles, with forms of ornamental works; and, also, for the cutting of dies, and designing models and ornaments for silversmith work (Sheffield Independent, 6 April 1876).  

After George Ashforth (who also had some practical knowledge) and Samuel Ellis had joined forces, other partners were recruited.  In 1773, Ashforth, Ellis, Hawksworth & Best became one of the first firms to register a silver mark at the Sheffield Assay Office.  By 1787, now named Ashforth, Ellis, Wilson & Hawksley, the enterprise had moved to Angel Street.  It had a London office at Foster Lane, which was near St Paul’s Cathedral.  John Wilson, a partner, died on 16 March 1794, and was buried at St Peter & St Paul’s churchyard.  William Crowder joined the firm, though he withdrew in 1804.   

In about 1800, Ashforth and Ellis had built new works at Red Hill (later occupied by Horrabin).   Ellis built a house at the corner of Red Hill and Broad Lane.   But neither Ellis  nor Ashforth were businessmen and so they relied on other partners to run the enterprise.  These included Samuel Revell, John Atkin, and Thomas Nixon.  The latter left in 1808.  John Roberts (perhaps the silversmith involved with Settle) was recruited.  As Ellis’s grandson remarked:

So long as the business remained in a small compass [Ashforth and Ellis] were competent personally to manage it; but when it became desirable and requisite to extend the trade to various parts of the kingdom and establish agencies, that could only be done by means of employing ‘clever’ travellers, more than one of which afterwards became partners.  For a good number of years the business was enlarged and carried on with great success; and at one time my grandfather had realised a fortune out of it.  But it eventually turned out that the very party who had been the principal instrument for promoting and maintaining the prosperity of the concern for many years was also, through his reckless extravagance, mismanagement, and something worse, the chief means of bringing it to ruin (Sheffield Independent, 6 April 1876).

Branches were opened in Paris (where the firm shared a shop window with Wedgwood) and Dublin.  Leader (1905)¹ stated that at first ‘all went merry as a marriage bell’, but the Paris stock was destroyed in the French Revolution and the company also accumulated £5,000 in Irish debts.  It was bankrupt in 1811.  After John Atkin died at the start of 1812 (a grocer of that name was buried at the parish church on 10 January 1812), Ashforth, Ellis & Co was dissolved.   The stock-in-trade of the London warehouse was sold (Morning Chronicle, 25 February 1812).  

Ashforth’s death date is uncertain, but a George Ashforth was buried at St Paul’s on 29 May 1813.  He was aged 86.  Ellis ended his days in straitened circumstances, but received a stipend of £25 a year from the Assay Office (Crosskey, 2011²).   Samuel Ellis’s grandson recalled his grandfather as ‘tall and with a nose and profile not unlike the Duke of Wellington.  He wore a brown wig, Quaker-shaped coat, white cravat, and shoes with large buckles.  He was so very fond of flowers that he was scarcely seen abroad without having a flower or sprig in his buttonhole, and was known by scores of people as ‘the old gentleman with a flower in his coat’’ (Sheffield Independent, 6 April 1876).  According to his grandson, he died in 1823, aged 81.

^1. Leader, R E, Sheffield in the Eighteenth Century (Sheffield, 2nd edn, 1905)

². Crosskey, Gordon, Old Sheffield Plate: A History of the 18th Century Plated Trade (Sheffield, 2011)