Interesting book rest / bed tray c.1930s?

The John Watts Ltd. you found in Sheffield was only incorporated in 1999 so there is unlikely to be a connection.

I wonder if there may be two companies with the same name, occupying the same space in Sheffield... just in different times.

The old John Watts factory is now refurbished office rentals, but has kept the same name (for once the developers haven't smashed everything and have kept the wonderful stone signage on the building's front - check out 'Lambert Street S37AB' in Googlemaps streetview).

So John Watts (manufacturer) seems to have been running from 1765 - 1999, and John Watts (office rental) seems to be 1999 - present).

This was my thinking. It would make sense, if you owned the one building and it had "John Watts" all over the front of it, to nab the now-defunct name for your own rental business.

I saw a programme about reclaimers not so long ago - they interviewed a developer who showed the cameras an archive room of a Victorian factory they were about to demolish, rammed to the rafters with old wooden files and a hefty old iron safe.

He pointed at it and said people often tell him that this stuff is valuable, and it would be barbarous to destroy it... but at the end of the day it takes time to remove it, which gets in the way of knocking it down and building some overpriced low quality crap on top of this glorious building's grave (that last bit might not have been his actual words).

Lots of heritage is destroyed by philistines with schedules. The rest is destroyed by stupid stupid builders who think that £100 in scrap price is better than £10k in architectural salvage.