Eli and Lily Richards are buried under a tombstone bearing the epitaph, ‘In Loving Memory of Our Dear Parents… killed by enemy action December 12 1940’. Like many before him, Eli left his home in search of fortune and headed to Sheffield, then the steel capital of the world, thanks to the efforts of entrepreneurs such as Sir Henry Bessemer whose eponymous invention enabled mass production to meet rocketing demand for new railways across the modern world.
He convened an unrivalled collection of CEOs, inventors, investors and fund managers to launch a regional chapter in the city transformed by his ancestor. Fittingly, it was hosted at The Mowbray, a former steel merchants hall in the historic industrial neighbourhood of Neepsend. In the candlelit room, we heard from the entrepreneurs behind cutting-edge Sheffield companies in quantum computing, robotics technology, clean-power generators and infrared sensors.