Lunchtime Talk: Industry, Steel and Beer – Archaeology Along Attercliffe Waterside

York Archaeology are taking over Kelham Island Museum for a lunchtime talk on Wednesday 18 November, running from 1pm to 1:45pm. The session is called Industry, Steel and Beer – Archaeology Along Attercliffe Waterside, and it's built around the excavations they've been carrying out along the Attercliffe canal.

If you've spent any time around the museum, you've got the general gist of Sheffield's industrial past, but this goes into the ground. The talk looks at how the canal changed the local landscape after it was completed in 1819, and the cluster of works that cropped up around it. Among them were the small works of George Parker and the much larger Fitzalan Works, both part of the city's steel-making history. Right alongside them sat a malt house that produced the beer that kept the growing local workforce going — a nice reminder that the steel industry didn't just run on metal and sweat, but on the pubs and breweries that served the people working there.

The site is remarkably well preserved, and it includes one of the better-preserved fully integrated steelworks excavated in Sheffield in recent years. It's been described as having regional significance, and it catches the city's industrial revolution just as it was gathering pace. The talk draws on the actual finds from the excavations, so you'll get a sense of what was really there rather than just the broad history.

It's a short one, just 45 minutes, so it fits into a lunch break if you're working nearby. The suggested donation is £5, and booking is recommended. It runs from 1pm to 1:45pm on Wednesday 18 November at Kelham Island Museum.