Advertisement from 1868 Directory. Image courtesy of Geoff Tweedale.
The Lands were Methodists from Wakefield. Henry Land was born in 1820 in Monk Bretton, Barnsley, and when he moved to Sheffield was apprenticed as a horn presser. By 1845, he had switched to Britannia metal manufacture and then became one of the first electro-platers in Sheffield (after apparently visiting Elkington in Birmingham). Henry partnered William Harriss in Harriss & Land. But in 1864 that business was dissolved, and Henry Land & Co was established as an electro-plater and gilder and manufacturer of spoons, forks, and fish, dessert and butter knives. In 1865, when the firm advertised, the address was Orchard Lane.
Land’s business was a success. He had a large house in Glossop Road, a carriage and pair, and several descendants. He employed 30 workers in 1871. But his wife, Eliza, died on 27 November 1869, aged 49, and Henry descended into alcoholism. He would often be found lying in the gutter but would appear the next day in top hat and frocked coat with a silver cane, and apparently none the worse. However, according to a company history (Land, 1997), he sold the company in a drunken stupor in 1870. He died in Leeds on 8 May 1894, aged 74, and was buried with his wife in an unconsecrated grave in the General Cemetery. His son, Thomas (1853-1934), rebuilt the business. In 1881, the latter employed six workers. During the early 1890s, Tom partnered cutler Walter Oxley (as Land & Oxley) at Nimrod Works, Eldon Street; then by 1901, T. Land & Son was operating at Nelson Works in Trafalgar Street. In 1904, a silver mark was registered. In 1906, Tom Land adopted limited liability (with £5,000 capital) and moved T. Land & Son Ltd to Colonial Works, Queen’s Road. He concentrated on electro-plated Britannia metal (EPBM) and pioneered machine engraving (the trade mark was ‘CIVIC’). He was a teetotaller, who refused to recognise trade unions.
The company struggled in the inter-war years but survived on orders for mass-market silverware from Boots and on machine-made pewter ware. Tom died on 14 December 1934, aged 81, leaving £4,302. His grandson – another Tom (b. 1914) – worked at Jessop’s, the Sheffield tool steel maker, during the Second World War. He worked on pyrometers and after 1945 shifted Land’s towards this business. In the early 1950s, the silverware and cutlery interests were sold to E.H. Parkin and Land Pyrometers Ltd was formed. In 2017, it traded as AMETEK Land at Dronfield – part of a multinational electronics instrument supplier headquartered in the USA.