Arguably, the most impressive former cutlery factory in Sheffield is James Dixon & Sons.  In its Edwardian heyday, too, it was amongst the biggest cutlery firms, with perhaps only Walker & Hall and Joseph Rodgers & Sons surpassing it in size.  Its factory was Cornish Place on the banks of the River Don in Neepsend.

The foundation date is unclear.  Dixon’s Centenary Souvenir was published in 1906: however, the same  publication stated that Dixon’s began in 1805 in Dixon’s Yard, Silver Street.  The year 1804 has also been mentioned as a starting date.  The founder was James Dixon (1776-1852), whose family was involved in the cutlery trade (Eastwood, 1862).  James Dixon had gained his early experience with Richard Constantine and Broadhead, Gurney, where he developed an interest in Britannia metal.  He once told a friend: ‘I have a thought in my mind that will make my fortune’ (Hunter, 1875¹).  This ‘thought’ was the recognition that Britannia metal (composed of tin with the addition of antimony and a little copper) was an ideal substitute for many household items – such as tea and coffee pots – that had formerly been made in expensive silver or brittle porcelain.

Apparently, Dixon’s working capital at the start was about £200 (Sheffield Independent, 1 February 1873).  As early as 1807, he partnered Thomas Smith.  This was possibly the ‘Thomas Smith’, who was listed in 1811 as a manufacturer of Britannia goods and cutlery in Eyre Street.  Dixon himself was not listed at that date.  Dixon & Smith, Silver Street, appeared in directories by 1815.  In 1822, Dixon & Smith was listed as a manufacturer of Britannia metal goods and dealer in cutlery, with a rolling mill in Green Lane.  James Dixon resided at Broom Lodge.  He acquired the controlling interest in about 1822.  (Smith seems to have retired and had died by 1829.)  In the early 1820s, Dixon moved to Cornish Place.  (Apparently, the ‘Cornish’ in the factory name referred to Cornish tin, which was a constituent of Britannia metal).  The business probably employed over a hundred.  An engraving in The Sheffield Directory and Guide (1828) depicted the factory, with an open courtyard to the River Don.  The site was surrounded by fields and gardens and offered potential for future growth.

Initially, Dixon’s main focus was on Britannia goods.  According to Bradbury (1912)², ‘no firm in Sheffield have ever made more goods of white [Britannia] metal’.  The material gave Dixon’s first directory listings a utilitarian air as a manufacturer of Britannia metal goods, spoons, tins, patty pans [for baking], and scallop shells (Conroy, 2008).  However, by the 1830s Dixon’s was also manufacturing powder flasks and shot belts, besides silver and plated goods.  James Dixon brought his sons into the business, which was styled Dixon & Son (1824) and James Dixon & Sons (1835).  He had married twice: first to Hannah (d.1806), and second to Ann, who was the daughter of Thomas Nowill (Gronvald, 1994³).  These marriages produced three sons:  William Frederick Dixon (13 June 1802-27 December 1871), James Willis Dixon (19 July 1813-21 January 1876), and Henry Isaac Dixon (30 June 1820-24 November 1912).  William was in the counting house, James lived in New York and handled the US business, and Henry was a traveller.  James Dixon’s son-in-law, William Fawcett (9 March 1807-3 November 1864), was also a partner.  The founder retired in 1841 as a rich man.  He bought Page Hall, a mansion that had been built by a Sheffield banker in the 1770s.  He owned 450 acres, employed 20 men on his estate, and described himself in the Census as a ‘landowner’, not a manufacturer.  He died on 17 October 1852, aged 76, and was buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s, Ecclesfield (inside which is a plaque).

Dixon’s reputation was firmly established.  It won a Prize Medal at the Great Exhibition (1851) for its Britannia wares.  Dixon’s workforce was well over 400 by the early 1860s and some contemporary accounts state that the number had reached 600 by the end of that decade.  The open frontage to the River Don had been obliterated by the company’s workshops.  The size of the factory meant that working conditions were apparently better than in other, more cramped, establishments.  An official report into child labour noted that the buildings were: ‘new and roomy, with large open space in the middle, and provided with closets and washing places.  Some parts of the works are dusty and dirty, and there is a strong smell of the oil used, but the females engaged in these keep a working dress’ (White, 1865⁴).  Newspaper reports observed that women and girls undertook much of Dixon’s work, but stated: ‘it is neither heavy nor dirty, or if it is, they at least possess the happy art, so commendable in women, of being alike cleanly and contented in the doing of it’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 3 June 1871).  However, foreign visitors described female buffing work at Dixon’s as ‘purgatory’ (Conway, 1867-8⁵). 

Dixon’s trade was global.  In the beginning, the American trade was a driving force in the company’s growth (Conroy, 2006⁶).  Dixon’s had a New York office after the 1820s, where James Willis Dixon became the ‘founder of the firm’s reputation in the States’ (Sheffield Independent, 22 January 1876).  By the 1840s, the firm was also sending Sheffield Plate and Britannia metal to Baltimore and Philadelphia.  If surviving antique Britannia metal goods are any guide, then Dixon’s dominated the American market between the 1820s and 1840s (Scott, 1980⁷).  When this market collapsed in about 1860, Dixon’s found new customers in Moscow, Paris, and towns and cities in the East Indies and Australia.  In the 1870s, when Dixon’s was extending its trade to the Colonies, the company opened a London office.

From the 1850s, H. I. Dixon became the dominant individual at the company.  The expansion of the factory was said to be ‘largely due to his commercial faculties’ (Derry, 1902⁸).  James Willis Dixon Jun. (16 September 1838-29 June 1917), who had been born in New York, later assumed the direction of the business.  Another grandson of the founder, James Dixon (26 October 1851-30 January 1947), managed the Continental business.  He became one of the youngest Masters Cutler in 1887 (when he was the subject of a fawning profile in The Ironmonger, 27 August 1887).  They directed the company during a boom period for silver and electro-plate products.  Dixon’s had been condescending about electro-plate, when it first appeared (Higgins & Tweedale, 1997⁹).  But once the firm had taken out a licence in 1848, electro-plated goods became a major part of Dixon’s output.  The company’s illustrated Centenary Souvenir (1906) shows that the company’s main departments were Britannia, electro-plate, flasks, hollow-ware, spoons and forks.  The staple products were fancy dinner services and silver trays for the Victorian and Edwardian middle and upper classes.  Dixon’s employed leading designers (albeit with mixed commercial success), such as Christopher Dresser (1834-1904), who designed for Dixon’s between 1879 and 1882.  Dixon’s sold table cutlery (including knives made from shear steel), pocket knives, sportsman’s knives, Bowies, and silver fruit-knives.  Dixon’s was well known for its shooting accessories, especially powder flasks, gun implements (such as cartridge loaders), and dog whistles.  It also manufactured hunting canteens, saddle flasks (for whiskey and soda), and sandwich cases – everything one would need for a day’s shooting on the grouse moors.  The trade marks were a trumpet with banner and the same in combination with the word ‘DIXON’.  The first corporate mark was granted to Dixon’s in 1879, and the second, with the name added, in 1890.  Silver marks were registered in 1829 and 1867.

Cornish Place and its army of workers grew steadily.  In the 1890s, the workforce was approaching 700.  When the staff gathered in Dixon’s courtyard in July 1906 for a centenary photograph – flanked by the firm’s multi-storey workshops and its giant chimney – the number was about 850 (more than triple the workforce in the early 1840s).  Over half were female.  Several workers had been employed forty and fifty years – some even sixty years!  Several generations of the Biggin family (Samuel, Joshua, and John) in Parkwood Springs had helped Dixons run their Britannia metal department.  William Miller (d. 30 March 1873, aged 78) had been foreman in that department and on his retirement had been with the firm for 57 years.  John Ramsbottom (d. 13 January 1891, aged 74) in the powder flask department had worked for over half a century.  Dixon’s personified the paternalistic Sheffield family firm, with its regular outings and celebratory gifts between bosses and workers.  In 1870, the workers presented a portrait to W. F. Dixon in appreciation of his ‘kindness and liberality’ towards them.  The account of the presentation filled four columns in The Sheffield Independent, 10 May 1870.

The Dixons (and their relations) could afford to be liberal:  they had become one of the richest clans in Sheffield.  William Fawcett (whose daughter had married Sir John Bingham, of Walker & Hall) left nearly £40,000 in 1864.  William F. Dixon inherited Page Hall and left about £70,000, when he died  in 1871 (he was buried in Ecclesfield).  James Willis Dixon bought Hillsborough House and filled it with a library and art collection (containing works by Rembrandt, Rubens, and Watteau).  He left about £50,000 on his death in 1876 (his burial in the General Cemetery was unconsecrated).  H. I. Dixon lived at Stumperlowe Hall, which he had bought in 1854.  He left £91,262 in 1912 and was buried in Fulwood.  J. W. Dixon Jun., Shire House, Ecclesfield, died on 29 June 1917, leaving £94,382.  The funeral was at City Road Crematorium.  He had retired in 1915, when the event was duly celebrated by the workforce and by The Sheffield Independent, which on 21 July 1915 ran a feature on ‘A Sheffield Blade’.  It seemed that Dixon’s glory would never dim.

However, the company, like the silver and electro-plate industry, peaked in 1914.  The War wrecked the market for luxury goods and demand never recovered in the inter-war years.  In 1920, Dixon’s became ‘Ltd’ with a nominal capital of £200,000.  The chairman was Lennox Burton Dixon (1868-1941), who was the great grandson of the founder.  Dixon’s absorbed the assets of Hutton’s.  Dixon’s used the Hutton mark on its fancier silver and presentation pieces.  However, this attempt at a ‘double hit’ with customers was unsuccessful – partly because Hutton’s former managing director was so antagonistic to Dixon’s that initially the sales sides of the two businesses had to be kept separate.  Lennox B. Dixon, Tapton Crescent Road, died on 9 August 1941, aged 73.  He left £15,201.

Nevertheless, Dixon’s survived into the 1950s as one of the larger cutlery factories.  It still sold hundreds of holloware products (Bell, 2011¹⁰).  After 1947, Dixon’s even began making powder flasks again, having acquired the name of G. & J. W. Hawksley.  But mass market goods in stainless steel and chromium plate sent the firm into sharp decline after the 1960s.  Even in the 1970s, the firm was managed by a Dixon, with the stolid figure of W. Milo Dixon (1901-1976) representing the fifth generation.  But when he died on 31 December 1976 (leaving £33,241) the firm went into receivership.  Bill Samwell, a manager at Dixon’s, and a London stockbroker, Bill Benton, attempted to revive it and provide work for the 150 or so workers remaining (Quality, January/February 1978).  But in 1982, it collapsed again with debts of £1 million.  Cornish Place was closed in 1992, when it had ‘a staff about the size it had been in 1806’ (Bell, 2004¹¹).  Dixon’s name was bought in 1994 by the Sheffield-based precious metals group Solpro, which also owned British Silverware Ltd.  Solpro had been founded by Paul Tear (1937-2019), who was Master Cutler in 1997.  Operations were transferred to Windsor Street in Attercliffe, but the Sheffield Flood in 2007 hit the factory and by the end of that year Solpro needed re-financing.  Dixon’s became part of Argentum Ltd (also within Solpro) and traded under the name Vintage Silver Pieces.  James Andrew Tear (Master Cutler in 2021) next headed Solpro.

Dixon’s name therefore endures; so too does Cornish Place.  By the end of the twentieth century, the massive, blackened exterior and the grimy windows of the factory had been given a facelift and the old workshops had been transformed into riverside apartments.  Stand on Ball Street Bridge, over the River Don, and one can still enjoy a fine view of this former factory.  Grimy or clean, its visage gives a unique insight into the size and importance of Sheffield’s old cutlery industry.

^1.  Hunter, Joseph, Hallamshire:  The History and Topography of the Parish of Sheffield in the County of York  Revised edn by Alfred Gatty (Sheffield, 1869, 3rd edition, 1875)  
^2.  Bradbury, F, History of Old Sheffield Plate (London, 1912)
^3.  Gronvald, Nowill, The Nowill and Gronvald Families (1994)
^4.  White, J E, Fourth Report of the Children’s Employment Commission (London, 1865)
^5.  Conway, M D, ‘Sheffield – A Battle-Field of English Labor’, Harper’s Monthly Magazine 36 (Dec 1867- May 1868)
^6.  Conroy, Rachel, ‘Letters from America: James Dixon & Sons and the American Market, 1835-1963’, Silver Studies 21 (2006), pp 105-112
^7.  Scott, Jack L, Pewter Wares from Sheffield (Baltimore, 1980)
^8.  Derry, John, ‘Who’s Who in Sheffield’, bound volume of newspaper cuttings, SCLLS, 1902
^9.  Higgins, D, and Tweedale, G, ‘The Commercial Development of the Sheffield Silver and Electro-plate Industry, 1840-1914’, THAS 19 (1997)
^10. Bell, Pauline C, A Rare and Special Collection Pieces about James Dixon & Sons of Sheffield, Makers of Silver and Pewter Products and of Sporting Accessories (Sheffield, 2011)
^11. Bell, Pauline C, Made in Sheffield: The History of James Dixon & Sons Silversmiths (Sheffield, 2004)