Sheffield history - Kenwood Hall and George Wostenholm

Kenwood Hall and its park were owned by a man called George Wostenholm who was a local cutler.  His father and grandfather had also been in the cutlery trade and owned a company called George Wostenholm and Son and they manufactured knives, forks, pen knives and folding knives at 78 Rockingham Street.  He was given his own trade mark l*XL.

  

At this time Sheffield held a monopoly on the American cutlery trade and George Wostenholm made the first trip of 30 to America in 1836 to set up agencies to sell his cutlery.  The first agency was in New York but they expanded as far as San Francisco.

In 1856 George Wostenholm became master culter.

In 1875 George Wostenholm set the company up as a limited company and he became chairman and managing director.  From 1876-80 records show they had annual profits of around £10,000 and shared produced a 10% dividend.

After the end of the American civil war America could produce cutlery cheaper than the UK company as they mass produced by machines.  George Wostenholms company could not make the trade unions change to the new method of work and the American side of the business was forced to close down.

From 1836 onward he bought large areas of land in the Nether Edge area.  He modeled the area on Boston in Massachusetts and lined the road with trees

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He sold of some of the land for development and the houses built were for other cutlers and business men.  Other developments were speculative and the builders of the time made a large contribution to the look of the area.  The area started to change from open fields to a desirable middle class area.