Didn't think I'd have something to add about your home, but I've just left a flea market in Connecticut with a bit of old Sheffield!
I was just walking by a table, insisting that I was just looking and not buying anything, when I saw your city's name and before I could stop myself, he said $7 and I said OK (not a haggler!), and now this is mine:
I assumed it was just one of those many tin signs that are scuffed, but only old timey reproductions. But my Dad took a look at it, and said from the bolt holes that it had been hung up for a long time. So the back is shiny, but the front has appropriate wear.
I researched it online while still at the market, and didn't find much, except that apparently they made furnaces for the steel industry back when:
http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/G._P._Wincott
http://www.rotherhamweb.co.uk/h/extracts/1908.htm
"March 21st 1908
Mr. Albert Senior, of Messrs. George Senior and Sons (Limited), Ponds Forge, Sheffield, and Mr. C.P. Wincott, furnace builder, Sheffield, have invented a new furnace which is arousing considerable interest among metallurgical experts and steel manufacturers."
Likely a Hawleyboard Dad worked for them, and you'll tell us all sorts of interesting things!
And a further click here:
http://jg-shelton.co.uk
reveals the unsettling information that they were bought by another company, and now the furnaces are used for the delicately worded "only uniquely British operation for crematoria." Now I figured that the jokesters here would take that and run.
While I'm asking questions, does anyone know why these older signs in the UK have that period following the city name?
~ Karen
I wonder what sequence of events took the sign to the U.S.
