Sheffield

Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, on hills where the River Sheaf, which gave it its name, meets the Don. Its knives were known by the 14th century, when Geoffrey Chaucer gave a Sheffield blade to the miller in The Canterbury Tales.

Water wheels on the fast streams of the valleys turned the grinding stones of the cutlers. Benjamin Huntsman, a clockmaker, made crucible steel in Sheffield in the 1740s, and Thomas Boulsover found the way to fuse silver onto copper that became known as Sheffield plate. Sheffield received the status of a city in 1893. Harry Brearley discovered stainless steel in a Sheffield laboratory in 1913 while testing alloys that would resist wear.

Henderson's Relish, a spicy sauce like Worcestershire sauce but without anchovies, has been bottled in Sheffield since the 19th century. Swann-Morton makes surgical scalpels and blades at its factory in the city, and Gripple produces wire joiners and tensioners used on fences and vineyards. Special steels for aircraft parts are still rolled at the Stocksbridge works, upstream on the Don.

Sheffield FC, founded in the 1850s, is recognized by FIFA as the oldest football club in the world, and the Sheffield Rules shaped the early game. The Crucible Theatre has staged the World Snooker Championship each spring since the 1970s. Kelham Island Museum shows the River Don Engine, a steam engine that once drove a steel rolling mill. The Winter Garden, a glasshouse of larch arches in the city center, holds plants from around the world, and the moors of the Peak District begin at the city's western edge.