The Cutlers - Heritage

Paintings

The fine paintings and furniture, collected by the Company over the centuries, justly complement the magnificent interior of the Cutlers' Hall. 

There are a number of portraits of past Masters Cutler as well as notable local political and religious leaders.  Some of the larger paintings hang in the Main Banqueting Hall, including portraits of the Duke of Wellington and Queen Victoria.

Pride of place however, is a painting of Sheffield in 1843 by Henry Perlee Parker.

Featured portrait - John Spencer, Master Cutler, 1835

The portrait of John Spencer is oil on canvas, approximately 75 x 62cms.  The subject has grey hair and is seated in a red chair with his arms folded.  He wears a dark jacket with high winged-collared shirt.  He also wears a tie pin.  The artist in unknown.  The portrait was given to the Company in 1926.

John Spencer came from a long line of Spencers, a family who had been filesmiths since at least the 1770s.  He was the son of Matthew, becoming a Freeman and registering a mark as a filesmith in 1827.  The mark, which was a crescent above the letter 'Z', continued to be used by later Spencers, his son taking the mark when he became a Freeman in 1849 and similarly, his grandson in 1876.

John Spencer worked in his family's company Matthias Spencer & Co., steel merchants and file manufacturers.  Their factory was Albion Works on Pea Croft, to the north of the town centre.

He was Master Cutler in 1835, three years after the building of the third and present Cutlers' Hall,  He led the compaign for the building of the Sheffield and Manchester Railway along the route via Woodhead Tunnel, which was completed in 1845.  He died in 1874.