The story
Thomas Firth & Sons
In the late 1830s Thomas Firth was head melter at Sheffield crucible steelmakers Sanderson Brothers. He had fathered ten children, seven boys and three girls.
Two of the sons, Mark and Thomas junior followed in father's footsteps and started work at Sanderson Brothers but in 1842 left to set up their own business in Charlotte Street, Sheffield, their father joining them shortly afterwards. In ten years their business had grown and it was necessary to find larger premises. With land available they moved to a large site in Savile Street, Sheffield, adjacent to the works set up by John Brown. It was named Norfolk Works and had crucible furnaces, a file making shop and what was, at the time, the largest rolling mill in Sheffield.
In the 1850s and '60s Thomas Firth supplied Samuel Colt with most of the iron and steel used at his firearms factories both at Hartford Connecticut and the short-lived facility in Pimlico, London. Business grew and moved into the armaments market directly, the company installing two Nasmyth Steam forge hammers in 1863 which were used to forge heavy artillery pieces. In 1871, Firth's cast the thirty-five ton Woolwich Infant gun and 5 years later they produced an eighty-ton gun.
Mark, whilst at his Norfolk Works, suffered a stroke on 16 November 1880 and died at his Sheffield home 12 days later; he was buried in the General Cemetery. The company, however, continued.
John Brown and Company
John Brown founded his company in the 1840s to manufacture steel files. Over the years the emphasis moved to the manufacture of railway track, made from steel provided by the new Bessemer process, and later to rail coach springs. Shipcladding and shipbuilding interests came into the company portfolio and finally, in the 1950s, general construction.
Following an eight-year role in successfully selling files and cutlery around the world in 1844, John Brown started in his own right a steel-making company in Orchard Street, Sheffield, on the site of the present Orchard Square shopping development. There was no room for expansion on the site and his second works was opened in Furnival Street, a short distance away. Business expanded rapidly and more new premises were needed, this time in Holly Street, just over the road from his original works. Having works scattered throughout the city centre area made for production problems and because of this, on 1 January 1856, he opened a totally new works on a single site on the edge of the town, in Savile Street which he named Atlas Works.
In 1846, whilst still at Orchard Square, he invented the conical railway buffer and became a market leader in the United Kingdom. Once settled on the new Atlas Works site he decided to make use of the steel puddling process. Whilst the steel produced by this method is not of the high quality which was being made by the crucible process, it was ideal for making railway springs and buffers and, importantly, cheaper to produce.
Merger and takeovers
In 1902 Sheffield steelmakers John Brown & Company exchanged shares and came to a working agreement with neighbouring company Thomas Firth & Sons, the companies continuing under their own management until they finally merged in 1930.
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In 1934 the stainless steel business, based at the Staybrite Works, Sheffield, was split off as a jointly owned company with English Steel Corporation Ltd. and was re-incorporated as Firth-Vickers Stainless Steels Ltd.
In 1936, in an attempt to extend and diversify its business interests they bought a considerable number of shares in Westland Aircraft Ltd. of Yeovil and the following year they purchased Markham & Co., of Chesterfield a company well known for its machinery, especially its winding engines and ancillary machinery for the mining industry, and tunnelling machines, which were used in excavations for the London Underground, the Moscow Metro, and the Paris Metro.
In 1957, the company acquired the Parkhead Forge in Glasgow, that had been formerly owned by William Beardmore and Company, before eventually closing the site in 1976.
In 1973 Firth Brown merged with the Derby and Manchester-based wire-making firm Richard Johnson and Nephew, to form Johnson and Firth Brown Ltd (JFB).
Sheffield Forgemasters
In 1982 Johnson Firth Brown and its near neighbour, British Steel Corporation's River Don Works, amalgamated to form Sheffield Forgemasters, with a 50:50 division of the shares between JFB and the government. The following year the company hit trouble and the shareholders voted to write off debt, sack the company's board and set up a rescue package with new management.
In 1998 the company was sold in two sections to American buyers; the aerospace section was sold to Allegheny Teledyne and the River Don and Rolls section to Atchison Castings. The latter business failed and the company went into liquidation in 2003. Only after clearing many hurdles did it become the subject of a management buyout.
Sheffield Forgemasters is now one of the oldest established steel making companies in the world.
From Wikipedia’s article on Firth Brown Steels, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3