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Hackney Tyzack

The Tyzacks of Hackney

No.8 Old Street, (next to what became Shoreditch railway station). Picture circa 1920.

I recently came across a wonderfully well-researched page on tyzack.net, describing Henry Tyzack’s move to Hackney from Sheffield. Not only do I live in Hackney, I’ve worked in and around it for a decade or so. I’m very familiar with all the addresses mentioned and the author’s descriptions give a wonderful colour and reality to what life must have been like as a 19th century tool maker in the East End. Well worth reading this fascinating page and other pages from the site. I’m now looking at my Tyzack tenon saw in a completely
new light.

 

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Drabble & Sanderson Saws Tool Makers

Drabble & Sanderson (Sheffield, UK)

One of the things I’d like to explore with this blog, as well as showing individual hand tools, is to to give an insight into some the British manufacturers responsible for making them.

D&S dovetail saw
D&S dovetail saw

 

D&S dovetail saw
Drabble & Sanderson dovetail saw (close up)

I found this ‘Drabble and Sanderson’ 8″ dovetail saw on an auction site, 17ppi, and marked ‘Warranted’, ‘Sheffield’ and ‘Cast Steel’. The tool making industry of Sheffield is well documented, but I wanted to find out more about Drabble and Sanderson.

D&S dovetail saw
Drabble & Sanderson dovetail saw (close up)

Several listings popped up on the internet, mostly marking Drabble and Sanderson as having premises at Steelhouse Lane, Sheffield (around 1825), then Ebenezer Works (around 1837) and finally the same works address, at Russell St. Maybe someone has more information about this?

Then, in the way that one does on the internet, some idle noodling around led me to this amazing account by ‘Brit’, on lumberjocks.com. It documents the breaching of Dale Dyke reservoir on March 11th, 1864. A local disaster which affected many people including Thomas Wilkinson and Robert Howden of Drabble and Sanderson. The other links listed by Brit are also worth reading. The internet is sort of amazing like that.

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