18 Facts About Thomas Boulsover

Thomas Boulsover, was a Sheffield cutler who is best remembered as the inventor of Sheffield Plate.

Thomas Boulsover made his fortune manufacturing various items, but especially buttons using the process, he later diversified into making cast steel and saws.

Thomas Boulsover began his apprenticeship to learn the trade of cutler in 1718, being apprenticed to Joseph Fletcher, a native of Wirksworth in Derbyshire who had established himself as a cutler in Sheffield.

Fletcher was a Presbyterian and the young Thomas Boulsover would have been brought up with the same religious views as it was expected that an apprentice would join his master and family in their manner of worship.

Thomas Boulsover continued as a cutler, with several apprentices working for him over the years; in the early 1740s he moved his business to new premises on Sycamore Hill the workshop being on the corner of Tudor Street and Surrey Street opposite the present day Sheffield Central Library.

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In early 1743 Thomas Boulsover made the accidental discovery which was to change his life and have an immense effect on the success and development of Sheffield.

Thomas Boulsover experimented with his discovery of Sheffield Plate and found that when the silver and copper were fused together they could be treated as one metal, meaning that an ingot of copper fused with a layer of silver could be rolled to any area and thickness and still retain the same proportion of the two metals.

Thomas Boulsover needed financial assistance to set up a business in fused plate and it came from Mr Strelley Pegge of Beauchief Hall who loaned him the necessary capital.

Thomas Boulsover went into partnership with Joseph Wilson whose father was a scythe smith at Sharrow, setting up a workshop on Baker's Hill in Sheffield.

Thomas Boulsover's buttons were stamped from a die on a fused metal sheet, then cut out, polished and burnished until they were hardly distinguishable from genuine silver.

In 1749 Thomas Boulsover rented a lease of land in Beeley Wood to build a grinding wheel, but an alteration to the original lease allowed it to be converted into a tilt forge known as the Nova Scotia Tilts.

Thomas Boulsover repaid the money loaned from Strelley Pegge and continued his enterprise with the help of two apprentices, hiring John Hoyland as an agent to promote the sale of his buttons.

Unfortunately Thomas Boulsover did not take out a patent on his discovery of Sheffield plate and Hoyland set up a business of his own making buttons and passed the secrets of the process on to others.

In 1751 Thomas Boulsover was elected as one of the 24 assistants to the Master Cutler, however even though he was re-elected as an assistant the following year he never rose any higher in the Company of Cutlers.

In 1760 Thomas Boulsover turned his interest to manufacturing better quality steel.

Thomas Boulsover purchased land from the Duke of Norfolk on the Porter Brook just below Whiteley Wood Hall and commenced rolling steel.

Thomas Boulsover discovered that cast steel gave a much better edge to saws and concentrated on saw making, with his product being far superior to those made by the old method of hammering.

Early in 1789, Thomas Boulsover's two surviving children Mary Mitchell and Sarah Hutton built a small Methodist chapel near to Whiteley Wood Hall in memory of their father.