© Ken Hawley Collection Trust - K.0355
Edgar Allen’s was a leading Sheffield steel and tool manufacturer. The Edgar Allen name and marks also appeared on straight razors and stainless cutlery (such as pocket knives). These products would have been factored by Allen’s and were probably marketed up to the 1930s.
The founder was William Edgar Allen (1837-1915), who was raised in London and was apparently the illegitimate son of Mary Ann née Rudelhoff. In 1858, he started work at Ibbotson Bros as a foreign correspondent. A decade later, he opened an office in the Wicker. With a partner, George Rose Jones, he later leased a small workshop at Well Meadow Street. They sold hand-cut files, tool steel, and circular saws, which were mostly factored. While George Jones kept ‘shop’, Edgar Allen did the travelling.
In 1879, they started a small file works at Upper Allen Street. In 1881, when the firm employed about 50 workers, Allen and Jones quarrelled. The former continued to trade as Edgar Allen & Co. In 1886, Allen bought Hoole, Staniforth & Co, which operated steel melting furnaces at Minerva Works, Arley Street. In 1890, the firm’s expansion led to its relocation to Imperial Steel Works, Tinsley. Allen’s became a private limited company in that year, with a nominal capital of £100,000. Heavier steel manufacture began namely, steel castings, manganese steel track work, and high-speed steel. These developments led, in turn, to the expansion of file, saw, and tool manufacture at Allen’s. In 1897, the firm became a public company with £350,000 capital (and apparently 400 hands).
Allen died at Whirlow House on 28 January 1915, aged 77. His funeral was at City Road Crematorium. His ashes were interred at Worksop Priory Churchyard in a massive tomb, which Allen requested to be built over the grave of his ‘aunt’, Mary Ann Ovenden (formerly Rudelhoff). Allen’s estate was £271,069 (worth over £25m today). He had been a generous donor to Sheffield University. His will left a variety of charitable bequests totalling about £150,000.
Tool manufacture at Allen’s expanded during the First World War. By 1919, when Allen’s authorised capital had reached over £½m, a small tools department was operating. In 1927, the firm installed the world’s first high-frequency induction furnace, which boosted the production of Allen’s butt-welded and tungsten-carbide tipped cutting tools. But the unprofitable file department was closed in1931.
After 1945, profits and output soared. In 1950, the paid up capital was £708,000 and the workforce about 2,500. In 1954, a new engineers’ tools manufacturing department was built at Shepcote Lane. In 1972, Allen’s absorbed the British Steel Corporation’s cutting tool business at Holme Lane. But Allen’s steel interests began to contract and were eventually absorbed by the Aurora group (which was bankrupt by 1983). The Imperial Steel Works site was cleared for the construction of Meadowhall Shopping Centre.