George Hukin, razorgrinder

George Hukin and Edward Carpenter

Sometime last year, I discovered that George Hukin, - socialist razorgrinder and unrequited love of Victorian radical Edward Carpenter - lived with his wife Fanny round the corner from us in Brook Cottages on Mickley Lane. These were the same cottages (demolished in the 1950's) where Harry Brierley, the inventor of stainless steel lived. Brierley learned to make shoes and sandals from another of Carpenter's friends, George Adams. They must have met through Hukin.

Today, via Rony at Radio Sheffield, I had a postcard from Don Alexander. Don used to run a shop selling Sheffield knives and other goods on Eccleshall Road. He had found my mention of George Hukin - and his burial under a hedge at Holmesfield Church - in the Sheffield Telegraph and wrote to me to say that George's nephew, Billy Hukin, was the last of Sheffield's cut-throat razorgrinders and visited him most days in his shop. Billy died in 1994 aged 73. "A great bloke," Don says, " a typical independent Sheffield artisan - his own man, subject to no creed. Full of life, always keen to learn and understanding of today's youths."

He went on to say that the brothers - George, Walt and William all worked as razorgrinders at Turners near the Sheffield Midland Station and that a showcase of their products is at the Millenium Galleries. Bill's dad set up on his own and Bill himself started as a 13 year old in 1917 (the year of George's death - probably from grinders lung).

A surprise sprinking of snow......

.........over Greenoak Park from our window this morning. St George's Farm (where Ruskin set up some squabbling bootmakers to grow fruit) winks from its hill.

Later we take the chesty car up to Dick's garage at Dore. We walk the old coffin route alongside the trickle of the Bushey - an old path which I am sure many residents don't even know about as it is hidden away between two suburban streets - Busheywood Road and Devonshire Road. The robins sing wistfully.

Here's another old Derbyshire squeezer stile at the end near Tesco Express.....

I truly hate Tesco's.

Across the Baslow Road and up a very slippery bank past the flats and up stone steps onto the top of Prospect Road, Woodland Place and Queen Victoria Road. The view across to Houndkirk Moors sparkles this morning:

Back down Queen Victoria Road and I take a picture of Woodland Villas which I recently discovered by a process of deduction was briefly lived in by Edward Carpenter, the gay Victorian radical and simple-lifer (recent fascinating biography written by Sheila Rowbotham). He wrote to Walt Whitman from here, describing the view.

At the bottom of the road I suddenly notice (and how many times have I walked past here?) the old grindstones set each side of the driveway of the flats on the corner of Queen Victoria Road and Mickley Lane. Perhaps there were grinders on the Totley Brook here? Certainly George Hukin, Carpenter's friend and unrequited love lived a few yards from here and was a razor grinder.