Ruskin`s Reach - The Guild of St George

Ruskin’s
Reach
Visit the site of John Ruskin’s St George’s
Museum (now the privately owned Ruskin
House, no access to property) to view it and
the new plaque from the pavement.
Meet the Walkley knife grinders,
file forgers, school teachers, farmers,
silversmiths and artists who visited the
museum.
Follow your own route to discover where
they lived and how they worked.
Glimpse a colourful picture of Walkley
life in the 1880s.
Find out more www.ruskininsheffield.com
Virtual museum www.ruskinatwalkley.org
Guild of St George www.guildofstgeorge.org.uk
RUSKIN-in-
@RuskinToday
SHEFFIELD
A self-guided trail
around the Victorian
Walkley of John Ruskin’s
museum and its visitors
Portrait of Ruskin, Study of a Peacock’s Breast Feather by John
Ruskin and photos of the museum © Collection of the Guild of
St George, Museums Sheffield. Creswick frieze © Worshipful
Company of Cutlers London. Ramsden chalice © Green Jackets
Museum. Visitor book photos by Bill Bevan. Volunteers have
traced these Walkley visitors using the museum’s visitors’
books, census and historic trade directories. Trail produced by
inHeritage. © Guild of St George, 2015.
Slaying Dragons in Walkley
John Ruskin was a
renowned thinker,
writer, artist and
social reformer. He
founded the Guild of
St George in 1871
to help make the
world a better place
to live in.
In 1875, Ruskin
visited his friend and
former pupil Henry
Swan in Walkley. Excited by the landscape and
strong artisan tradition he found, Ruskin opened
a museum to promote the liberal education of
Sheffield’s working men. Ruskin chose Walkley
to bring Sheffielders up and out of the city to a
place of clean air and broad horizons with views
over Rivelin ‘in their wild uncultivated beauty
suggestive of the Alps.’
“Sheffield workmen are more honest and careful
in their wish to turn out good work than the
workmen of other towns”
Henry Swan, Curator
1
St George’s Museum, Bole Hill Road
The museum was first housed in one room of
a cottage, shared with live-in curators Henry
and Emily Swan and their family. It opened free
of charge, 9am to 9pm daily except Sunday,
by appointment, and closed Thursdays. The
early collection included works by Dürer and
Holbein, sketches and casts of Venetian
artworks, gemstones and medieval illuminated
manuscripts. In 1878 it was extended to better
accommodate the Swans. It was extended
again in 1885 to house an ever-growing
Library. His work appears on public buildings
from London to Leeds, and even in Malaysia,
for whom he sculpted Chung Keng Kwee, the
founder of modern Taiping.
3
collection. The museum closed in 1890, following
Swan’s death, and the Ruskin Collection moved
to larger premises in Meersbrook.
2
Benjamin Creswick, 120 Bell Hagg Road
Date of visit: 1881, aged 27
When Dr Balbirnie advised this ailing Walkley
knife grinder to change job for his health, little
did he know he was nudging a notable artistic
career. Creswick spoke of being inspired by
the Walkley Museum and showed the doctor a
small sketch of Dante. The doctor, impressed,
commissioned a portrait bust. In the 1870s
Creswick and his family lived at three different
Freedom Road addresses. By 1881, Creswick
was at 120 Bell Hagg Road, recognised by
Ruskin as an artist, and had already exhibited
numerous busts of the great and the good,
including Ruskin himself. Creswick went on to
create the friezes that adorn the Sheffield and
London Cutlers Halls and the Bloomsbury
Fanny Spooner, Spooner’s Farm, 22
Bole Hill Road
Date of visit: 1880, aged 48
In the 1881 Census, farmer’s daughter Fanny
Spooner is listed as Head of Household, living
with her brother, nephew and a domestic
servant. She later moved along Bole Hill Road
to number 61, then 245, where she lived with
Hannah Smedley, her widowed servant, and
Hannah’s daughter. On her death in 1906,
Fanny left over £2015, accrued from her
properties.
4
Nora Wright, 11 Bole Hill Road
Date of visit: 1889, aged 14
A scissors burnisher and cutlery dresser, Nora
came from a challenged household. Her mother
a laundress and father an unemployed blade
striker had 4 daughters and a grandchild at
home and one girl in hospital in 1881. By 1891
the older girls had left, and the family were
caring for their paralysed daughter Frances
at home. In 1899, Nora married blade grinder
Arthur Booth and had a daughter Phyllis. Arthur
died in December 1918 and Nora returned to
the metalwork trades she knew. Nora died in
1947 and is buried in Walkley Cemetery.
5
Blanche Broomhead, 9 Bell Hagg Road
Date of visit: 1889, aged 18
Blanche and her 4 brothers were close
neighbours of the museum, and lived on the
same street as Benjamin Creswick. Blanche’s
father Thomas was a silversmith, and her
brother Lorenzo followed him into the trade. By
1901 Blanche lived in Birkenhead, housemaid
to a cutler and shopowner.
6 Martha Lawley, 47 Orchard Road
Date of visit: 1889, aged 11
Daughter of a silversmith father and silver
burnisher mother, by the age of 13 Martha
had begun work as a servant for the Newtons,
publican and stonemason at the Walkley Old
Cottage. In 1894, aged 16, Martha died at home
at Orchard Road. She is buried in Walkley
Cemetery in the same grave as her 5-monthold sister May (d. Nov 1894) and 21-month-old
brother John (d. May 1887).
7
Ann Elizabeth Ellison, 114 Freedom Rd
Date of visit: 1880, aged 40
Former schoolmistress Ann lived independently
on an inheritance from her file-manufacturing
father. In 1891 Ann’s nephew Alwyn Carr was
living with her at Freedom Road, perhaps to
be near his friend and future colleague Omar
Ramsden. Carr became a celebrated silver
designer. He worked for nearly 20 years with
Ramsden and they lived for some years in a
London studio complex, shared by several
Sheffield artists. You can see Carr’s work at
Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery.
8
Fred Ford, 161 Cundy Street
Date of visit: 1889, aged 9
Fred was one of many Walkley children who
visited the museum. He appears to have visited
with Charles Hatcher, also of Cundy Street. By
the time Fred was 21 he was living at the Bell
Hagg Inn, possibly as a servant. After that Fred
disappears from the records. Did he emigrate?
9
Omar Ramsden, 70 Fir Street
Date of visit: 1887, aged 14
Born in this Fir Street house, Omar
Ramsden became one of the
most successful
silversmiths
of his
generation.
His work
reflected
Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau
and medieval
influences. Ramsden’s Sheffield family returned to Walkley from
several years in America in 1887.
By 1891, 17-year-old Omar was already
working as a silver meddler, designer, chaser
and engraver at Sheffield School of Art, and
teaching modelling at the Board School. Omar’s
numerous prizes included scholarships to study
at London’s V&A and Royal College of Arts.
Ramsden and Alwyn Carr travelled together in
Europe, then moved to London and registered a
silver mark in 1901. They worked together until
1919, often sharing accommodation – at first in
a Wandsworth studio complex, later at South
Kensington, where they employed more than
20 craftsmen to realise their designs. Ramsden
retained the studio when the partnership split,
designing the pieces that bore his mark.
10 Samuel Senior, 29 Tennyson Road
Date of visit: 1887, aged 22
Blade forger Samuel specialised in pen and
pocket knife blades. He married Gertrude
Colton, a Walkley girl, daughter to a file forger.
Their daughter Florence grew up to work as
a leather sheath stitcher, while nephew Frank
lived with the family, and worked as a metal
smith. By 1911, Samuel had left metals to work
as a theatre attendant, possibly due to poor
health, since he died the same year. Buried in
Walkley Cemetery, grave G216.
11 Willis Wreaks, 133 Duncombe Street
Date of visit: 1889, aged 10
Willis won at least 8 prizes for his art skills
from the Sheffield School of Art between 1895
and 1901. His father John worked as a silver
engraver, eventually a heraldic engraver, and
Willis became a die sinker, engraving the dies
used to stamp designs on coins or medals.
gained a lengthy sick
record and was
transferred to the
Labour Corps (common
for soldiers in poor
health). In 1921 he
emigrated to New
Zealand and continued
working in theatres,
becoming a union rep,
until convicted in 1932
of ‘misappropriating union funds’. He served a
6-month sentence, and thereafter worked as a
kitchen hand until his death in 1955.
13 Richard Mabbott, 56 Fulton Road
Date of visit: 1889, aged 11
Broomhill-born Richard lived with his mum, dad
(a razor-hafter) and 5 siblings. In a sideways
move from blades, Richard became first a
butcher’s assistant, then a butcher at the Coop. By 1911 he was married and had his own
butcher’s shop at the corner of Crookesmoor
and Barber Road.
14 George Albert Cryer, 41 Blake Street
Date of visit: 1883, aged 41
12 Samuel Padgett Dibb, 145-147 Howard
Road – Walkley Conservative Club
Date of visit: 1889, aged 7
Samuel’s parents married in India. They had
one son there and another in Scotland before
moving to Sheffield, where Samuel was born.
Samuel’s mother worked for the Conservative
Club, his father for the School Board. By
1901, the family were at 48 Aldred Road.
Samuel worked as a stagehand at Sheffield’s
Hippodrome on Cambridge Street, before
moving to the London Palladium. During WWI
Samuel served in France with the Irish Hussars,
File forger George seems the epitome of the
artisan ‘man of iron’ Ruskin hoped to liberate,
educate and improve. George’s address and
occupation remained unchanged over 30 years.
His sons William and Frederick followed him
into the metals industry, daughter Florence
became a dressmaker.
These are just a small number of the many
Walkley residents who visited St George’s
Museum between 1875 and 1890. Read about
more visitors at www.ruskininsheffield.com.
P
© OpenStreetMap contributors
Many of these museum visitors’ houses are
still standing. In a few places you will find
empty ground or modern houses, a result of
the ‘slum’ clearance and redevelopment of
Walkley during the 1960s-1980s.
P Pop-Up Ruskin Museum, until 24th October 2015.
Ruskin Rests
15. Cook family, 158 Fulton Road
Ruskin stayed here in 1879. Ruskin wrote of
‘funny wee lodgings ... with a nice carpenter and
his wife ... Everything beautifully clean - but too
much china - and things on tables.’
16. Royal Hotel, 114 Walkley Street
Ruskin stayed at a Royal Hotel in 1875. Was it in
Walkley, or another Sheffield Royal Hotel?
?? Grocer, Walkley
In 1880, Ruskin stayed at a ‘little grocer’s shop’
in Walkley. The location remains a mystery.