David Mellor Building

Introduction

The David Mellor Building, known as the Round Building, stands just outside Hathersage in the Peak District National Park, Derbyshire: a working circular cutlery factory designed by the British designer David Mellor with the architect Sir Michael Hopkins and completed in 1990. There is a piece of cause and effect in the footing that is easy to miss. The factory sits on the site of the village gas works of 1906-07, and the existing circular gas holder foundations happened to give the round plan its footing, so the circle was not chosen arbitrarily; it came out of the ground. The site covers about five acres. Architectural language: local stone and steel. A deep stone eaves line wraps the whole volume, and a huge spoked steel roof converges on a central glass skylight, pouring daylight into the workshop. The roof is made of 480 Finnish birch plywood panels, each of a different size. Mellor and the workers cast the floor together and made the stone door and window sills, so designer and workforce under one roof is written into the building itself. Production flow: the circular plan sets cutlery production on an anticlockwise route, from metal cutting and semi-automatic grinding to hand finishing, cleaning and packing, in one continuous pass. Form following function here is not a slogan but something your feet can verify: follow the material around once and you have seen the whole process. Awards: the FT Architecture at Work Award, a RIBA National Award, the Civic Trust Award and the BBC Design Prize for the Environment. It is often described as a minor masterpiece of modern architecture, out of the architectural spotlight yet holding the best late-twentieth-century British factory design and the best handmaking inside one circle. Three places to linger on site: the free design museum showing the complete work of two generations of Mellors, from handmade silver to street furniture, bus shelters and traffic lights, with a reconstructed 1960s street scene outdoors; the country shop selling cutlery, kitchenware and Mellor-designed everyday objects; and the well-regarded Riverside Kitchen cafe, the main reason to stop. Factory tours are guided, usually thirty to forty-five minutes, mostly on weekend afternoons around 15:00, with limited places and advance booking. Admission: the museum is free, tours and some events need advance booking and a ticket. Hours are Monday to Saturday 10:00-17:00 and Sunday 11:00-17:00, closed only on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day. A 2026 closure to note: from 14 September to 16 October the B6001 between Grindleford and Hathersage is closed to all traffic, with diversion via the A6187 and B6521. Sequencing: walk the Peak District trails in the morning, go into the factory in the afternoon and have coffee at the Riverside Kitchen in the evening, the most comfortable day in this area.

✨ Highlights

🛈 Practical Info