What the crown certifies
A crown in the row means the piece was assayed at the Sheffield Assay Office. It is a town mark, so it records where the silver was tested, and the lion passant beside it records the metal, sterling at 925 parts silver in a thousand. Sheffield struck the crown from 1773 until 1974, and from 1975 it marks its silver with a rose instead.
Four punches make a full Sheffield row: the lion passant, the town mark, a date letter for the year, and the maker’s mark of whoever sent the piece for assay. A piece marked between 1784 and 1890 carries a fifth, the sovereign’s head, for the duty paid on silver.
| Mark | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Crown to 1974, rose from 1975 | Assayed at Sheffield |
| Lion passant | Sterling, 925 parts silver in a thousand |
| Date letter | The assay year |
| Maker’s mark | Who sent it for assay |
| Sovereign’s head, 1784 to 1890 | Duty paid |
The crown, and the rose from 1975
Sheffield used a crown as its town mark for two hundred years. When the hallmarking rules changed at the start of 1975 the crown was dropped and a rose took its place, so a rose in the row dates a Sheffield piece to 1975 or later and a crown dates it earlier.
Check the metal before you read a crown as Sheffield. In an English gold row the crown means something else entirely: from 1798 until the 1973 Act it was the standard mark for gold, struck next to the carat number, so a crown with an 18 or a 22 beside it states the fineness and says nothing about the assay office. A crown in a silver row, next to a lion passant, is the Sheffield town mark. A crown next to a number is gold.
Why Sheffield has a crown
An Act of Parliament in 1773 gave Sheffield and Birmingham assay offices of their own, after a petition run from the two towns. Before that a Sheffield maker sent work to London or Chester and waited for its return. The petitioners are said to have settled the two town marks at the Crown and Anchor tavern in the Strand, with Sheffield taking the crown and Birmingham the anchor.
Sheffield’s trade decided what the office marked. The town made cutlery and candlesticks above all, so the crown turns up on flatware, on loaded candlesticks with a weighted base, and on the tea wares of a Victorian sideboard.
Sheffield date letters
The office has struck a date letter every year since 1773, changing the typeface and the shield at the start of each new cycle. A letter on its own dates nothing. The shape of the punch fixes the cycle, and the letter then fixes the year within it.
Sheffield’s early cycles do not run in a tidy alphabet. The first letter struck in 1773 was E, for the Earl of Effingham, who had carried the petition through Parliament, and for fifty years after that the guardians picked the next letter at their annual meeting rather than working down the alphabet. Only from 1824 do the letters run in order. A Sheffield piece from 1773 to 1824 therefore cannot be dated by counting letters at all, and needs a printed table such as Bradbury’s.
The identifier holds the Sheffield cycles from 1918 onwards. Anything earlier is not in it yet, and the date letters guide explains how to read a shield in the meantime.
The makers of a cutlery city
Sheffield silver is mostly the work of a few large firms rather than lone smiths, and the name on the base changes the price.
| Maker | Known for |
|---|---|
| Walker and Hall | Cutlery and canteens, the mark set in a flag or pennant |
| Mappin and Webb | Flatware and presentation plate, Sheffield and London |
| James Dixon and Sons | Flatware, hollow ware and Britannia metal |
Much of what looks like Sheffield silver is not silver at all. Old Sheffield Plate, made by fusing a skin of silver onto copper, and later electroplate stamped EPNS both carry maker’s marks that a hurried eye reads as a hallmark. Neither is assayed, and the solid silver or plate guide has the tests that tell them apart.
What Sheffield silver makes at auction
| Object | Marks | Hammer |
|---|---|---|
| Pair of George III candlesticks, Sheffield 1791 | Lion, crown, date letter | £720 |
The candlesticks are an illustrative figure from the price records. They sold as a decorative pair rather than for their metal, because a loaded candlestick holds little silver over its weighted base. A plain canteen of Sheffield flatware sells closer to its weight, which the scrap calculator works out from the grams, with a little more for a good pattern or maker.
Where a Sheffield row goes wrong
Three mistakes account for most of them. A crown beside a carat number is gold, not Sheffield. A stamped firm’s name with no lion passant anywhere in the row is plate, whatever the name says. And a letter counted off the alphabet dates nothing before 1824, because Sheffield did not use the alphabet in order until then.
If the town mark turns out to be a leopard’s head the piece is London, an anchor is Birmingham, and wheatsheaves are Chester. The hallmarks guide takes all four marks in order on real pieces.
