Hi Iain,
Sheffield used to be famous for quite a few things back in the day, sadly like so many cities an awful lot of industry has gone.
There is a small amount of cutlery and still some silversmiths in Sheffield but the heydays are long forgotten, most if not all the "Little Misters" have gone. When I was an electrical apprentice, we had contracts with many of the steelworks in the East End, Most of these works had their own shunting engines, Firth Brown, Firth Rixon etc were a delight to wander through, massive metal lathes with beds over 50 and 100 foot long, the operators seat was fixed above the work head, A number of my friends worked for some of these companies and thought they had a job for life, sadly not the case.
A number of friends worked at Viners, my best man and my good mate, was a metal smith there, he worked for them from leaving school and was there almost to the end. He still went into a number of firms doing some peace work with the silver trade, even though he was a self employed driving instructor. At one time he was one of the 2 people that could mig-weld pewter effectively. He is now a postman awaiting retirement.
Sheffield is the home of Swann Morton who produce surgical steel, if you see a scalpel more than likely it will be one of their blades.
I am currently watching a session of one of the best things to come out of Sheffield, The Crucible and the World Snooker championship.
Regards
Alan