Sheffield has been famous for the making of steel since the fourteenth century when one of Chaucer’s pilgrims is described as carrying a “Sheffield Thwital” (a small knife used when eating) in his hose. The proximity of iron ore, steam, for power and suitable grinding stones made Sheffield an ideal centre for making steel. In the sixteenth century Sheffield began to increasingly specialise in making cutlery with the arrival of expertise in the form of Flemish immagrants and in the following century in 1624 a Company of Cutlers was established.

When Arnold Ashton Charlesworth married Mary Roberts in 1884, he was part of a large Charlesworth clan which had settled around Sheffield to take advantage of the work available in the thriving town. The original move would probably have come from the village of Charlesworth (about 15 kms east of the centre of Manchester) and from where the family gets its name, to Sheffield many years prior.