Random notes on the Steelopolis. This isn’t just a history page. It’s about appreciating everything around us – the buildings, people, products and events that shaped the City of Sheffield. It’s about taking notice of what is around you now, and observing the things that will become history for our descendants. Photograph by Brian Mosley.
A long time ago, I read a book containing John Gielgud’s letters and I seemed to remember that he called the people of Sheffield ‘peasants’. After that, I didn’t fancy watching his films anymore. Gielgud (1904-2000) was born in South Kensington, and as an actor and theatre director, he looked down on us poor northerners.
I recently came across a copy of the book in a second-hand bookshop and couldn’t resist flicking through to find that discriminatory paragraph again. It turns out that I did him a disservice, because he didn’t call us peasants after all, but certainly didn’t like Sheffield.
“This is an appalling place and just as I remembered it before – awful slums and poverty everywhere and the audiences sparse and unresponsive.”
He wrote these brusque words in a letter to his mother in October 1927, and even though he was probably right, I’ve never liked John Gielgud since.
The same feeling came across me when I read ‘Skip All That’ – the memoirs of Robert Robinson that was published in 1996.
Robinson (1927-2011) was an English radio and television presenter, game show host, journalist and author. He presented Ask the Family for many years on the BBC. I was surprised to learn that in his younger days he worked as a journalist on the Weekly Telegraph, a satellite of the Sheffield Telegraph.
But his memoirs show that he regarded his stint on the Telegraph as a low point in his career. At that time, the Sheffield Telegraph was owned by Kemsley Newspapers, which also had The Sunday Times, The Daily Sketch and The Sunday Graphic amongst its titles.
“The Editorial Director explained the Weekly Telegraph was about to be relaunched as a big-time glossy and advertised on the eye-pieces of buses. I was to add my champagne to the editor’s brandy. A combination of which turned out to be more or less Tizer.
“The woebegone mag was printed on thin blotting paper and sold for threepence to readers I imagined to be comprehensively deprived. Nothing in the Kemsley’s frowzy empire looked capable of anything but lining a cat litter, and shortly after I started forging the (readers’) letters no more was heard about advertising or glossiness. And it wasn’t even Fleet Street, it was only Gray’s Inn Road. Kemsley House was a heap of red brick in the wastes between Clerkenwell and King’s Cross, and had the dejected air of a building site where the money had run out.
“I wondered why they didn’t invite me to write a column for the leader page of the Sunday Times, and what I hacked out on two fingers filled the Weekly Telegraph to overflowing.
“We published in London, but I was allowed an occasional jaunt to Sheffield to see how they printed the thing. Behold, on one such trip I saw a man on the platform who actually held a copy of the magazine in his hand. I approached him: was he, I importantly enquired, a regular subscriber? Not really, he replied. And why was that, I asked, giving him to understand that on matters of policy, a word from me and the thing was done. ‘It’s a bit too instrooctional;.’ he said. I simply thought he’d caught a whiff of the intellectual seasoning I was adding to the mix. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘we’re trying to get intelligent people like you to come up-market with us.’ ‘Then where are the pictures of scantily-clad women in bathing costumes?’ he asked. ‘And the crossword’s got too many big words.’ It wasn’t the length of the words, it was the necessity of having second sight. The crossword prize was a guinea, and the puzzle was rigged.
“Provincial papers are second division, but the Kemsley lot were second rate as well, the issue on sale any day in Sheffield, Manchester or Newcastle as stale in spirit as if it had been pulled from the musty files in the cuttings library.
“The pilotless hulk went down stern first, and clinging to a spar I was hauled aboard a ghost ship called the Sunday Graphic.”
Founded in 1855 as the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, it became known as the Sheffield Telegraph in 1938, and its sister, The Star, continues as a poor ancestor.
I must admit that Robinson was an excellent writer, and he did get his wish to write the Atticus column in The Sunday Times, as well as becoming one of the presenters on Radio Four’s Today programme. But when you read his work now, there is that niggling belief that he looked down on those of us who lived and worked outside London, even though he was born in Liverpool.
And so, as far as I am concerned, Robinson is shunted into the same cupboard as John Gielgud, and his book is on its way to a charity shop.
What would Robinson think about provincial newspapers now?
© 2024 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.
If there had been radio DJs in the 1920s and 1930s, then Henry Hall would have been the equivalent of Terry Wogan, or Ken Bruce. But there were no such things as DJs, and the adoration that existed belonged to bandleaders like Henry Hall, who brought music to the BBC’s infant airwaves.
Henry Hall (1898 – 1989) was born in Peckham, South London, and had no connections with Sheffield. He played from the 1920s to the 1950s, and in 1932 recorded the song Teddy Bear’s Picnic which gained enormous popularity and sold over a million copies.
Hall became bandleader of the BBC Dance Orchestra, and from 5.15 each weekday he gathered a huge following with his signature tune ‘It’s Just the Time for Dancing’ and usually ended with ‘Here’s to the Next Time’.
In 1937, he left the BBC Dance Orchestra to tour with his band, and this brings us nicely to Thursday 12 December 1940.
It was the Second World War, and Henry Hall and his Band were in Sheffield to play at the Empire Theatre on Charles Street at its corner with Union Street.
What follows next is an extraordinary account of wartime Sheffield that I stumbled upon while reading Hall’s autobiography – Here’s to the Next Time – that was published in 1955.
“On Wednesday evening I had supper after the show in the Grand Hotel (now the site of Fountain Precinct) with Jack Buchanan and Fred Emney, who were rehearsing for the forthcoming pantomime. We talked, I remember, of how Sheffield should be quite safe, as it was protected by having a decoy village built some distance outside the town.
“The following evening the warning went, and the German bombers missed the decoy completely and began to bomb the centre of Sheffield!
“One of the first incendiaries landed in front of the Empire just before we were due to appear. The manager, Fred Neate, dashed round and asked me to play one number, then announce that there was a fire and would the audience please leave as quietly as possible.
“I walked on to the stage and said, ‘We should like to play you the popular song, Six Lessons from Madame Lazongo,’ and almost before we began there was a tremendous explosion as a bomb landed outside the Stage Door, wrecking the side of the theatre.
“Luckily the stage itself stayed put, so we finished the number. I made the announcement as requested and we went into one of Freddie Mann’s comedy numbers, The Musical Typist, while the audience left in a hurry. It was a very fast number, but it had never been quite so fast as Freddie played it that night!
“We stood in the safest looking corridor for some three hours until there was a lull, and then I made a dash for the Grand where I was staying, only a few hundred yards away.
“Just before I reached the hotel the bombs began to fall again, and I was literally blown through the swing doors to land on the foyer carpet. When I had recovered sufficiently I joined the rest of the guests in the restaurant, which was thought to be directly under the main block of the hotel and consequently the safest place.
“As soon as the all clear sounded, about seven in the morning, I went to the theatre to try to make arrangements. It was out of commission, transport everywhere was disorganised and no trains were running. I left a notice asking all who could to meet outside The Sheffield Daily Telegraph Office at 10.30, when there would be transport to Chesterfield. Then I dashed back to the hotel to try to arrange it.
“Because of the dislocation of communication, I had to do it by six ‘phone calls. I rang the stage manager on one exchange, he rang a friend, and so on, until someone got through to Chesterfield and brought a coach over.
“With all my journeys between theatre and hotel, the orchestra had lost all trace of me, and were astounded when I arrived for the coach – my constant disappearances had led to me being ‘posted missing.’
“However, we got safely to Chesterfield, caught the midday train to Bristol and arrived at midnight just in time to hear their sirens beginning to blow!”
How lucky most of us are to have never witnessed such scenes!
This story leads to one that my dad told me recently, and would have taken place at the same time that Hall was desperately arranging his transport away from Sheffield.
He was eleven, and the morning after, walked with his Aunty Vera from Milton Street to Grimesthorpe to make sure that her boyfriend Jim’s family had survived.
“At the top of The Moor, Woolworths was a sheet of fire, and there were bodies laying in the road, and that was a sobering sight. But I realised that they weren’t bodies after all, but were actually mannequins that had been blown out of the shop.
“Pinstone Street was closed for access, and so we diverted along Union Street but found it blocked by rubble from the Empire Theatre that had collapsed into the road. We climbed up and over the debris before continuing along Norfolk Street, into Fitzalan Square, then down Haymarket and on to the Wicker. Most buildings were ruined and ablaze.
“At Wicker Arches, a bomb had gone straight through the railway line and through the bridge without exploding (the repairs still visible today), but we still managed to get through, and there was a place on Spital Hill that had wooden chairs piled high and had caught fire and were well ablaze.
“We walked all the way to Grimesthorpe and after finding that the Wells family was safe, walked all the way back again.”
Alas, for the Empire Theatre, it lost one of its two turrets which capped the towers on either side of the facade, and buildings on either side of the theatre were destroyed. It closed in May 1959 after being sold to a developer and was demolished two months later.
© 2024 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.
“I saw him in the cells at the Town Hall. he appeared very delirious there: his face was swollen, and his eyes had turned yellow. I’m afraid the wretched cell in which he was placed had turned him delirious: it was a most wretched place. He was innocent of the charge against him; but, of course, it preyed upon his mind, and being in that wretched place would tend to make him delirious. The charge against him weighed heavily on his mind.”
These were the words of Henry Levy in 1862. He was a clothier on the High Street, and he was speaking at the inquest of his friend and neighbour, Benjamin Cohen, a jeweller.
Days before, Mr Cohen, aged fifty-five, had been taken into custody on the charge of having stolen gold and silver watches in his possession. They had been taken in Swansea five years earlier, the crime unsolved, until detective officer Brayshaw in Sheffield received information that watches bearing the victim’s name were in the ownership of Cohen.
Mr Cohen was released on bail, but confined himself to bed, and would not eat.
Henry Jackson, his surgeon, was summoned on the Tuesday morning.
“I found him lying on his right side in bed. The clothes were wrapped around him in a disordered state. His face was pale, his eyes closed, and his skin cold. On turning down the clothes I found his hands bloody. His shirt was saturated in blood. On turning him on his back I found a razor fully open and bloody. On lifting his shirt, I found a large portion of bowels protruding, with a considerable quantity of blood under and about him. I did what was needful in replacing the bowels and relieving him.”
Cohen died from his self-inflicted wounds that night.
“I had been with him all day,” added Mr Levy. “He kept saying ‘position, once, twice; I did it nicely.’ I don’t know what that referred.”
With tradition, Mr Cohen was buried the next day. A hearse and two mourning coaches trotted through the streets of Sheffield until it arrived at Bowdon Street, where there was a small Jewish cemetery. He was interned and became one of the last people to be buried here.
Unbelievably, this sad story became known after a friend made a chance remark in the pub. He’d been working on the conversion of Eyewitness Works on Milton Street into trendy apartments.
“If you look at Google Maps, it shows that there is a cemetery nearby, or at least there was.”
To prove the point, he showed me his mobile phone and zoomed in on the area around Milton Street. Sure enough, on the road that runs parallel to Fitzwilliam Street, between Charter Row and Milton Street (near Corporation), was a red label showing Bowdon Street Cemetery. I’ve since tried this on my own phone and can find no evidence of it.
But my friend is right, because there was a Jewish cemetery on Bowdon Street, but no trace of it remains.
According to Sheffield Archives, the earliest reference of Jews in Sheffield is in the trade directory of 1797. It grew from about sixty people, belonging to ten families, in the 1840s to about 800 in 1900. This was due to immigration, those fleeing from persecution in Eastern Europe, and settling in Sheffield on their way from Hull to Manchester, Liverpool and eventually America. Benjamin Cohen had been born at Posen, then in Prussia, now part of Poland. Most families lived around the Scotland Street and West Bar area, many becoming watchmakers, jewellers, and tailors.
“The Sheffield Hebrew Congregation is about 120 years old,” wrote Rabbi Barnet I. Cohen in 1926, “though there were a few Jewish families here some time before the congregation was formed. One of the first acts was to provide a burial ground.” This turned out to be a small plot on Bowdon Street that was suitable for the handful of Jewish residents at the time.
The land was acquired in 1831 but closed in 1874, although burials took place afterwards where a plot had been reserved.
“The present cemetery is in Blind Lane, Ecclesfield,” reported Rabbi Cohen (who might have been a relative of Benjamin Cohen), “and there is also a cemetery in Walkley belonging to the Central Synagogue on Campo Lane.”
“The congregation has constantly had trouble through the desecration of the graves by urchins, who not content with climbing over the (high) walls, actually found delight in breaking up the tombstones and digging up the graves, and so recently had a stout door erected and pieces of glass placed on top of the walls.”
The graveyard was surrounded by industry, stables, and back-to-back houses, one of which belonged to Percy Richardson in the 1920s.
“A cemetery enclosed by high walls and the happy hunting ground for adventurous boys. The graveyard is spread over with stones and old tin cans.” It was described as the untidiest graveyard in Sheffield.
I mentioned Bowdon Street Cemetery to my 94-year-old dad, who couldn’t have been one of Rabbi Cohen’s urchins but may or may not have been a wartime urchin and remembers it from the time he lived on Milton Street.
The graveyard survived until 1975 when Sheffield City Council imposed a compulsory purchase order on the site, the ‘mortal remains of 35 grave spaces re-interred in Colley Road, Ecclesfield’.
Through an old map I’ve managed to find the exact location of Bowdon Street Cemetery, and on a rainy day this week, I visited the old site.
Bowdon Street is at the back of the NHS Substance Misuse building that fronts Fitzwilliam Street. The tiny plot would have run from Bowdon Street, the site partly landscaped, and would have taken up the back end of the Fitzwilliam Centre as it is now.
I thought about the tormented soul of Benjamin Cohen and trust that his remains are at peace in Ecclesfield.
© 2024 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.
This post is about Johnson and Appleyards, not many people will have heard of it, but that shouldn’t have been the case. Life is full of what ifs. What if things had been done differently? If they had been, then we might have been fondly remembering Johnson and Appleyards as we do Cole Brothers and Walsh’s.
Our story starts on 10 February 1909 when Councillor Walter Appleyard received a cable from Kobe in Japan. It was from his brother, Frank, and informed him that their older brother, Joseph, had died. The fact that it happened in a foreign country was no surprise because Joseph had travelled extensively to Australia, South Africa, and South America, and this latest excursion which started five months previous, had taken in Egypt, India, Burma , and China. The next stop would have been Canada before heading home.
The news might have suggested that this was the first stage of failure for Johnson and Appleyards, cabinet designers and manufacturers, upholsterers, decorators, undertakers, carpet warehousemen, colonial merchants, and exporters, but the decline had already begun, not that anybody had realised it.
The three Appleyard brothers, Joseph, Walter, and Frank were the sons of Joseph Appleyard, a Conisborough cabinet maker, who had a business until 1872, when he established J. Appleyard and Sons at Westgate and Main Street in Rotherham which the brothers ran.
In 1879, the brothers took over the Sheffield furniture-making business of William Johnson & Sons, with premises on Fargate, and renamed it Johnson and Appleyards. It was a bold move, but within a few years the business needed bigger premises to display its furniture.
They chose a prime site at the corner of Fargate and Leopold Street and employed architects Flockton and Gibb to design an impressive showroom built in Huddersfield stone with a mixture of giant ionic and stubby doric pilasters on its first and second floors.
The building was completed in 1883 and survives as Yorkshire House, where Barker’s Pool (then an extension of Fargate) turns the corner into Leopold Street. The only remaining trace of Johnson and Appleyards is a stone plaque, high up, that states ‘Cabinet makers to HRH The Prince of Wales’. For some reason, the building has failed to get listing from Historic England, and we now know it as home to jewellers H.L. Brown.
Johnson and Appleyards were the only firm to supply the complete range of domestic furnishings, selling their own furniture as well as famous names like Chippendale, Sheraton, Louis Quatorze, and Louis Quinze. In the basement, were showrooms for carpets, linoleum, bedlinen, and blankets. The ground floor held wallpapers together with general goods, along with the counting house, and stables and carriage/van sheds at the back. The first floor was dedicated to furniture with workshops behind, and on the second floor, further showrooms with draughtsmen’s offices and decorators’ shops to the rear. The third floor housed gilders’ workshops, polishers, upholsterers and bedding makers.
Johnson and Appleyards became a limited company in 1891, and the following year the building was extended, with an attic story and mansard roof built to create more retail and workshop space. At the same time, manufacturing was moved to a four-storey building on Sidney Street.
Johnson and Appleyards achieved national and international recognition with a ‘Prize medal awarded for Superiority of Design and Workmanship’ (York, 1879) and a gold medal award at the Paris Exhibition (1900).
There is a clue that business at Johnson and Appleyards had dwindled, because in 1906 the firm had moved to smaller premises next door on Leopold Street. While retaining ownership of the showcase corner property, it was leased at a handsome price to A. Wilson Peck & Co, wholesale and retail dealers of pianos, organs, and musical goods. (Wilson Peck – Beethoven House – another fascinating story for another day).
Joseph Appleyard (1848–1909), as senior partner, was the only brother to remain active in the firm, and although he remained a director, Walter had other business interests and would become Lord Mayor, while Frank had left by 1905.
Joseph’s marriage to Sarah Flint Stokes had given him eight children, none of whom had much interest in the business. Only two of his four sons, Joseph (1881-1902) and Harry (1876-1954) showed any enthusiasm. Joseph Jnr was employed by Wallis & Co, linen drapers, in Holborn, but drowned aged twenty-one in a boating accident on the Thames, while Harry, who had trained at Harrods in London and Maple & Co in Paris, joined the firm but left shortly after his father’s death. His other two sons joined the services, to avoid joining the firm and collaborating with their father.
A biography of Joseph Appleyard states that he was a strong conservative but had no desire to enter politics. He was a member of the King Street and Athenaeum Clubs, as well as being an affiliate at the Wentworth Lodge of Freemasons.
Julie Banham’s ‘Johnson & Appleyards Ltd of Sheffield: A Victorian family business’ (2001) hints that Joseph Appleyard was prone to violence and regularly beat his sons, while his wife turned to drink and became an alcoholic.
All these years later, it is difficult to determine the type of person that Joseph might have been. At that time, newspapers filled columns with obituaries of local dignitaries, often shown in positive light, but Joseph’s death had little mention. Is this an indication that there weren’t any kind things to say about him? He was cremated in Japan and his ashes interned at Fulwood Church.
Johnson and Appleyards had built its reputation on Victorian tastes that lingered into the Edwardian period. But the new century meant styles had changed. On hindsight, the firm seemed reluctant to evolve with the times, and while sales dwindled, excessive capital was still taken out of the business to fund lavish lifestyles. After Joseph Appleyard’s death, the management team struggled to find a long-term strategy, and two world wars did nothing to improve its fortunes.
The end of Johnson and Appleyards was inadvertently caused by German bombs that rained on Sheffield during 1940. One of them destroyed John Atkinson’s store on The Moor and it was forced to seek alternative premises in the city centre. It bought all the shares in Johnson and Appleyards, if only to secure the Leopold Street building, and would remain until its replacement store was built on The Moor. The old Johnson and Appleyards shop would eventually be swept away, along with the Grand Hotel, to build Fountain Precinct in the 1970s.
Here’s the surprise. Did you know that Johnson and Appleyards still exists, if only in name? Its shares are registered to Atkinsons on The Moor.
© 2024 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.
The evening gets off to a bad start. There have been no trams for a week because of a broken track at Manor Top. It sounds absurd in this modern age. Worse still, the bus I go to catch only runs every hour and doesn’t turn up. I run for the tram replacement bus service, and that doesn’t turn up on time either. By the time I get into the city centre, I’ve spent over an hour getting here when normally it would be a twenty minute journey.
High Street 8.00pm
Next door to The Banker’s Draft, there is a handsome old building that houses an indoor golf centre called Glory Holes – a golf club for adults. It is one of four venues operating across the country and is brightly lit. I assume that councillors were blissfully unaware what a ‘glory hole’ was, because had they done so, they would have insisted that they choose another name.
I suspect that the price of its drinks will deter punters from The Banker’s Draft from entering its doors. There is a female sat on the pavement outside. She is probably a lot younger than she looks and is wrapped in a blanket. She looks sad and holds her hand out in the hope that I might give her money.
I cross the road and walk up High Street. I pass a bus shelter where a girl is crying, and a man holds her tightly. He tells her not to worry and looks woefully at a large group of people nearby. Each one of them is holding a bottle of cider or a can of beer, at least four of them have dogs, and they are all shouting words of advice. These people aren’t waiting for a bus because they don’t have anywhere to go. I wonder what the commotion is about and leave them to it.
Perched on top of the next bus shelter is a traffic cone and the glass roof makes it look like it is floating in the air. I decide this is a good photo opportunity and take my phone out to snap it. The Telegraph Building forms a backdrop and I’m pleased with the result. Afterwards, a polite voice asks, “Am I okay to pass now?” and I thank him for his patience.
I look at the man as he walks ahead of me because I know what will come next.
He swings around. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any change?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, “all my money is on here now.” I wave my phone to show him that I use Apple Pay. He doesn’t reply and gives me a sour look.
On the ground floor of the old Telegraph Building is a Sainsbury’s Local that opens until eleven. It is next door to German Doner Kebab that is half empty, but the rest of the street is in darkness, including Cavell’s bar that might once have done brisk business on a Sunday night.
In the absence of trams, and the infrequency of buses, the High Street has a despondent look about it.
Gosling’s plan of 1736 is the chief authority for saying that High Street was formerly called Prior Gate; and it is probable that hereabouts was the Priory, and its existence can only be known from old deeds.
That was the general belief, but historians are sceptical that a priory ever existed at all, as they are about King John, who was supposed to have stayed at the White Horse Inn on Prior Gate while passing through Sheffield. I imagine an old Sheffielder telling a tall tale that became rooted in history.
The High Street we know today goes back to the street widening of the 1890s. Prior to this, it was much narrower with quaint and picturesque timbered gables, latticed windows and swinging signboards. Robert Eadon Leader told us that in the eighteenth century there were loads of hay that stuck fast, unable to pass the projecting upper story of Mr John Cooper’s confectionery shop.
The Sheffield Directory of 1787 mentions eight victuallers on this street, quite different from the present day. But it was always a shopping street, and all this was swept away so that the sites of its old buildings could not be located with certainty.
The High Street of the twentieth century was busy with elegant shops lining both sides. Most buildings survive but the lower end was obliterated during the Blitz of 1940.
By now, I’ve reached Wendy’s and McDonald’s, which are the busiest places tonight. People queue for takeaways and the tables are occupied by youngsters who see them as a place of refuge on a chilly night. Outside, where High Street meets Fargate, there are parked cars belonging to drivers collecting burgers and chips and then delivering them to the outreaches of the city centre.
Burger King has opened at the end of Fargate, the last of the big chains to get a foothold here. I’m meeting a friend, and he’s silhouetted against the takeaway’s cheerful interior. As I approach, he lights a cigarette and starts counting.
“One, two, three…”
He counts to seven before an unshaven male accosts him. The man is wearing an odd assortment of clothing, none of it designed for winter, and asks my friend for a ‘spare’ cigarette.
The irony is not lost on me.
This is where our ancestors used to meet for a night on the town. It was referred to as Cole’s Corner, a nod to Cole Brothers that once stood here, immortalised in a song by Sheffield’s Richard Hawley and one that has even found its way into Standing at the Sky’s Edge, the musical that recently moved to London’s West End.
Fargate 8.15pm
If High Street appears bleak, then Fargate surpasses it.
This was once the ‘far gate’ from the Parish Church and became Sheffield’s premier street. It was widened to accommodate traffic, its shoppers spilling from the narrow pavements as they jostled to get into the shops. There is a quote from a 1960s newspaper that called it the ‘Oxford Street of the north.’
Tonight, the scene on Fargate is anything but.
It was pedestrianised in the 1970s, and is now a building site, reinventing itself yet again, this time as a £15.8m social hub, to replace shops with event spaces, hospitality, and eating places. The paving is being changed and there will be flower beds promoting Sheffield’s ‘grey to green’ image.
For now, it is a maze of orange barriers, builders’ hoardings, and signs telling us how great it will be.
A busker plays La Bamba to no one outside Marks & Spencer and I wonder how he expects to earn a living. My friend suggests that he is doing it because he simply likes singing.
The shops are closed, but most are empty anyway. Gone are the big chain stores, replaced with vape stores and pop up shops. The last time that Google’s Streetview came here was in 2018 and it showed full occupancy. Since then, the decline has been rapid, and Fargate has become the classic tale of a street that lost its way.
People say that Meadowhall killed it, and while it didn’t help, we must remember that this was a quarter century ago.
I look at my iphone and realise that this is the reason we’ve fallen out of love with shops. Lockdown altered our habits, and retailers finally realised that we preferred to shop without physically shopping.
Tonight, some of the doorways are occupied by rough sleepers. They may or may not feel safe inside their sleeping bags but are far enough away from the party crowds of Carver Street and West Street to avoid being disturbed.
People walk past them, and I hear snatches of conversation, but cannot understand because they speak in different languages. The demographics say that Sheffield is 84% white, 8% Asian, and 4% Black. On Fargate, they are all speaking Eastern European. These are diligent people that will shape the city’s future, but I speculate as to what could entice them into the city centre tonight.
Towards the top end of Fargate is a recently opened Tesco Express that appears to be the liveliest place on the street. Along with other metros/express/locals opened by the big boys, this provides convenience shopping for daytime workers and shoppers, but on a Sunday, is more likely to service those mysterious folk who have moved into apartments.
A security guard stands in the doorway and keeps an eye on a group of kids riding bikes. They are masked like little ninjas and puffing on sweet-smelling vapes that look like fireworks in their hands. One of them asks me the time and I look at the Town Hall clock and tell him. I realise that they are up to no good but can’t quite determine what they are doing wrong.
At least they are riding proper bicycles, ones that take effort to ride, because every few minutes the silent killers on their electric bikes ride past. Somebody recently joked with me who might kill him first. Would it be Uber Eats or Deliveroo?
While we are walking, I remember an article that I read in Monocle magazine where an expert gave his views on the pedestrianisation of our cities.
“I have nothing against pedestrianisation, but if you’re going to do it, make sure there is something to encourage people to use it. Otherwise, life will be sucked out of the street.”
My friend says that Fargate will look nice when it is completed, and I must agree with him. But I am impatient, and it looks such a long way ahead.
We go to Benjamin Huntsman on Cambridge Street and start our Sunday Night Podcast, one that must never be heard by anybody else, because it is when we drink pints of Guinness, be politically incorrect, and put the world to right.
© 2024 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.
John Henry Andrew sat in the lounge of the steamship Montana feeling pleased with himself. He sipped his Old Forester bourbon and lit the cigar that he’d been given in New York. He was no stranger to travelling and calculated that this had been his thirtieth transatlantic trip.
He’d soon be back in Sheffield and would be able to tell his directors at the Toledo Works that he’d secured an important contract. It was a lucrative deal, supplying steel to Joseph Lloyd Haigh, a New York importer, and wire rope manufacturer, based at Brooklyn Wire Mills. More importantly, the steel would be used in the construction of the new bridge that would span the East River from Brooklyn.
Haigh had already taken a sample of steel from J. H. Henry and Company, drawing the rolled crucible steel rods into wire, and had presented a sample of it to the Brooklyn Bridge Company in 1876.
The ropes would be used to support the 486metre bridge, making it the longest in the world, and the sample had been enough to sway the directors that the Brooklyn Wire Mills was the ideal company to manufacture it. Haigh had beaten seven other companies for the contract, including one owned by the bridge’s architect, John Augustus Roebling.
Had John Henry Andrew known what lay ahead, then he might not have felt so pleased on that Atlantic crossing.
This had meant to be a positive post about the Brooklyn Bridge and the myth that it was constructed between 1869-1883 using Sheffield steel. Instead, this turned out to be an intriguing story of deceit, forgery, and monetary loss for the city’s steel manufacturers.
It was anticipated that English steel would be used in the Brooklyn Bridge’s construction, and the submitted bids came in cheaper than their American counterparts. However, the American steel companies put pressure on the US Treasury to increase import tariffs, effectively shutting down foreign competition.
A New York representative from the Sheffield Independent visited the Brooklyn Wire Mills in 1877 and found that only a small portion of steel for the four main cables had been supplied by Sheffield firms.
Haigh had reneged on his promise to J.H. Andrew, as well as the Hallamshire Steel and File Company, and had turned to Anderson and Parsevant of Pittsburgh to supply it instead.
Worse was to come.
Haigh struggled to meet deadlines for the wire rope, and this may have been the reason why he turned to deception to fulfil the contract.
In 1878, the Brooklyn Bridge Company discovered that Haigh had been supplying defective wire. Out of eighty rings evaluated, only five met standards, and it was estimated that Haigh had pocketed $300,000 from his dishonesty.
John Augustus Roebling thought that as much as 221 tons of rejected wire had been spun into cables and used, and so he demanded that another 150 wires were added to each cable as an additional safety factor. Had this not been detected, the consequences might have been catastrophic, and the sub-standard wires remain in place even today.
The Brooklyn Bridge Company decided to keep its discovery a secret and demanded that Haigh supply the extra high quality wire free-of-charge, but this led to his financial ruin.
Two years later, Haigh’s business failed, still owing approximately $20,000 to Sheffield companies, part of this for the Brooklyn Bridge, a figure that was never recovered.
Months later, Haigh was discovered to be a forger and had contributed to the collapse of America’s Grocer’s Bank, an action that led to his imprisonment in Sing Sing.
And so, we find out that the Brooklyn Bridge only has a small amount of Sheffield steel in its structure.
There is also another myth to dispel.
There are suggestions that Brooklyn Works at Kelham Island, once occupied by Alfred Beckett, saw maker, was named after the Brooklyn Bridge because steel from here was used.
We find that Beckett’s home was at Brook Hill, and he acquired his works in 1859 calling them Brooklyn Works, way before work on the bridge had ever started.
NOTE:-
J.H. Andrew and Company subsequently became Andrews Toledo, based at Toledo Works in Neepsend.
©2024 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.
The ghost of J.G. Graves walked the corridors and sighed. He looked at his reflection through the window and thought, “If you can’t give a damn, give it to somebody who does. Give it to them for nothing if need be. Tell them to move the books somewhere else and turn the whole building into an art gallery that will be the envy of every city. But make them restore it… and look after it.” He smiled to himself. “Then I might be able to rest.”
©2024 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.
It was one night last summer, and I was taking photographs of skateboarders who had requisitioned the former Staples car park at the corner of St. Mary’s Gate and Eyre Street. There were about thirty of them, showing off to each other, trying to be cleverer than the next.
A small group noticed my interest and obliged by making their skateboards do remarkable things, but the resulting photos weren’t particularly good and soon forgotten.
Staples had long gone, so had Office Outlet that replaced it, and we forget that Mothercare had a shop here, later home to Theatre Delicatessen. The retail park was emptied, bought by Lidl for a new store, but plans had faltered, and the site had surrendered itself to broken windows and graffiti, hastening the rapid descent into decay.
Wooden gates had been erected, preventing entry into the car park, and allowing skateboarders to takeover.
The recent posts about St. Mary’s Church and Ladies’ Walk made me think about the conversations I’d had that night.
Taking a breather from their enactment, three boys sat on the tarmac, drinking bottled water, and chatting about their hallowed space.
I told them that where they were sitting had once been Ellin Street, still listed on maps, named after Thomas Ellin, who used waterpower from the adjacent Porter Brook where it widened into Bennett’s Dam. Here, he founded Vulcan Works with cutlery shops and a steel furnace, and the makeshift skateboard park was where the dam had been.
“That’s cool,” one said, “the dam disappeared, but the river’s still here.”
He was referring to nearby Porter Brook, and the reason Lidl withdrew their planning application last autumn. The discounter was aggrieved about calls to deculvert the river where it flowed under the site, with the loss of car parking spaces .
On the other side of Porter Brook is St. Mary’s Gate, where I took them to see an information board about an ancient structure called Bramall Lane Bridge. Like many Sheffielders, they had no idea about it, and were surprised to learn that it still existed, yards from where they skateboarded.
“Look here,” one of the boys said, pointing to a tongue in cheek warning on the sign.
“Best not to explore under the bridge as there are rumours that the Old Bramall Lane Bridge troll eats anything, especially with her carefully guarded bottle of Henderson’s.”
When told not to do something, lads of that age will do the opposite.
Days later, I saw them again, and they told me that they’d followed the river under the bridge, and then bottled it for fear of meeting the troll that protected it.
Their reaction is common because people don’t realise that Eyre Street, where it joins Bramall Lane Roundabout, is really built on a bridge that starts at the edge of the former Staples car park and ends on the other side of the dual carriageway near Decathlon.
These days, there is a Friends of Bramall Lane Bridge Facebook group that is responsible for the information board, and for getting the bridge listed on the South Yorkshire Heritage List. That was no mean feat because until the group had applied for its listing, the heritage body was also oblivious to its existence.
But what of its history?
I remembered a letter that had been published in the Sheffield Independent from 1831: –
“Permit me, Sir, through the medium of your valuable miscellany, to call the attention of the Town Trustees and others to this hitherto neglected, though now highly improving part of town. The bridge over the river Porter cannot remain as it is, and if all the owners of adjacent property were to come forward, I am certain the town trustees would not be appealed to in vain for their assistance in connecting Eyre Street, by means of a quadrant or an angle, with Brammall Street. This may be accomplished at considerably less expense than might be at first imagined, and most assuredly it would not only very much increase the value of property in the neighbourhood but would become a highly acceptable substitute for Porter Street, at the entrance to the new part of the town, by throwing open to view that most elegant structure, St. Mary’s Church.”
The letter showed remarkable foresight and within years, a new bridge had been built and Eyre Street eventually connected with Bramall Lane. Had this not been the case, then Bramall Lane might never have become home to Sheffield United FC.
The bridge’s history goes back to days when this was countryside, still a distance from the town that ended where Moorhead is now. At this time, Porter Brook had to be crossed by a narrow wooden footbridge, and horses and carts had to splash through the water to get to the other side.
When the file manufacturing Brammall family built White House and Sheaf House (now a pub), the road leading to the houses became known as Brammall Lane, later shortened to Bramall Lane, and extended across the Porter and would have finished near to where Moor Market is now.
By the 1835 Highways Act, Sheffield Corporation was allowed to replace a wooden bridge with a stone-built structure, and is thought to have been completed by 1845-1846, opening land for development to the south of the town, in places like Highfield, Little Sheffield, and Heeley.
For a long time, it was known as Porter Brook Bridge, and was widened in January 1864, but there were already concerns that the bridge might not be strong enough to carry the traffic that might pass over it. The bridge was now 100metres wide and curved as it followed the course of the river.
This was the height of the Industrial Revolution, and rural land had been swallowed by the town. In 1876, Sheffield’s Medical Officer, F. Griffiths, reported that Porter Brook was full of sewage and the putrid remains of cats and dogs.
In 1877, the Corporation proposed plans to demolish houses between the west of Eyre Street, and the junction of Hereford Street, Porter Street, and Bramall Lane, allowing the extension of Eyre Street to the Bramall Lane Bridge where roads converged.
Once the roads connected, factories and houses were built, even on the bridge itself, but these have long disappeared, and the modern landscape is quite different.
These days, the only visible signs of the bridge are near Staples car park because the other end remains hidden, and most people are oblivious that Eyre Street runs directly over it.
Halfway under the bridge is the well preserved tail goit from the old Vulcan Works (Staples site) that joins the riverbank and has yielded finds such as a Victorian inhaler and oyster shells.
There is also a visible join in the structure about 25metres from the Decathlon end (75metres from the Staples end) that is thought to be the 1864 extension, while the Porter was culverted further from the Decathlon end of the bridge from the 1890s onwards.
Bramall Lane Bridge has stood the test of time, unlike the later culverted section that famously collapsed, forcing part of the Decathlon carpark to remain closed.
The Staples car park is now fenced off and the skateboarders have gone. This week Lidl announced that a revised planning application is pending, and it might include deculverting of another stretch of Porter Brook.
©2024 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.
It is late summer in 1782, and the sun is slipping behind the distant hills. The ladies of the town, wives of respectable businessmen, clergymen, and doctors, are taking an evening stroll with their friends and their daughters.
The air is fragrant with scents of the countryside: corncockle, yellow-flag iris, harebell, and wood anemone. The long row of trees provide respite from the waning heat, and beyond the wooden fence, cows and sheep lollop in the fields knowing that it will soon be time to settle down for the night.
When the ladies reach the river, sparkling and clear, they might cross in single file, using the narrow wooden bridge, and walk a little further towards the tiny village ahead, where its few houses will already have cast shadows on the ground.
Most will turn around and retrace their gentle steps along the grass path that leads back into town, and where their gentlemen will be waiting, joking amongst themselves that their wives have been taking the air along Ladies’ Walk again.
A decade later, James Montgomery, a Scottish-born writer who had unsuccessfully attempted a literary career in London, moved to Sheffield township and became assistant to Joseph Gales, auctioneer, bookseller, and printer of the Sheffield Register.
On the first Sunday after his residence, Montgomery was encouraged to take a walk along this same path, and where it reached the river, he watched as a horse and cart coming from remote Heeley had splashed its way through the river because the flat wooden bridge was designed only for those on foot.
Montgomery became a hymn writer, poet, and newspaper editor, and by the time he was famous, he had witnessed the growth of Sheffield and its expansion from Alsop Fields, across Sheffield Moor, towards that tiny village called Little Sheffield (now London Road).
Ladies’ Walk subsequently disappeared, with houses, and small workshops built along both sides of the path, and by the time the new century dawned, it had become known as Porter Lane, the road heading towards Porter Brook where a wider bridge accommodated horses and carts.
In time, Porter Lane became Porter Street, one of the shabbiest, dingiest, and dirtiest of suburban streets, far removed from the days when elegant ladies took the night air, but it became the main route between Moorhead and Bramall Lane.
During World War Two, Hitler’s bombs rained down on Porter Street, reducing most of it to rubble, and for the next twenty years or so, swathes of wasteland would be reclaimed by those forgotten wildflowers of yesteryear.
In the end, Porter Street ceased to exist, its remaining buildings demolished to make way for post-war redevelopment, and the stories of Porter Lane and Ladies’ Walk disappeared.
And so, my twenty-first century friends, there is a clue as to where Ladies’ Walk was.
If you travel up Eyre Street from Bramall Lane roundabout, the road bends to the right near Decathlon. Eyre Street became the prominent road into the city centre, but Ladies’ Walk, then Porter Lane, and Porter Street, went straight ahead from where the road still bends.
Imagine walking diagonally through 32 Eyre Street (known to many as Deacon House) at its corner with Hereford Street, across Cumberland Street, through Moor Market, across Earl Street, and through all the buildings until you reach Furnival Gate (once Furnival Street) where the modern H&M shop is now.
Those ladies would have walked from the end of Union Street on the opposite side of the road, straight through the side of the H&M shop, and into this lost and unimaginable rural idyll.
©2024 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.
Let me take you down the subway at the roundabout which links Eyre Street, St. Mary’s Road, Bramall Lane, and St. Mary’s Gate. Once you get into its tree-lined centre, stop for a moment, and consider that several decades ago you would have been standing in the corner of a graveyard.
It is true.
The construction of Sheffield’s ring road required the widening of St. Mary’s Road and a roundabout. It meant that the graveyard at St. Mary’s Church was deprived of land, and where graves once stood, the subway has become a popular route for students and football fans journeying to Bramall Lane. Come down here at night at your peril because it is also the haunt of muggers and the like.
In a few years’ time, St. Mary’s Church will celebrate its bicentenary and where other big churches have faltered, it will be content that it still operates as a place of worship.
Let us start at the beginning.
The year is 1818 and to celebrate the recent end of the Napoleonic Wars, parliament passed the Act for Building New Churches, allocating £1 million for the task; the buildings that resulted were often known as the Waterloo churches.
The church was in crisis, a situation brought about by changing demographics and altering religious affiliations: the surge of the working-class population in major cities, especially in the north, and the drift to nonconformity.
The Church Building Commission turned to the government Board of Works, and its three advisory architects, John Nash (1752–1835), John Soane (1753–1837), and their junior, Robert Smirke (1780–1867), to set guidelines and advise on practicalities.
It stated that no church should cost more than £20,000, and by the end of the Commission’s term, in 1856, some 600 new churches would stand across the country.
In Sheffield, three churches were commissioned under the chairmanship of Rev. Thomas Sutton of Sheffield’s Church Building Committee– these were St. George’s, Portobello, St. Philip’s, Netherthorpe, and St. Mary’s at Highfield.
St Mary’s Church was the last of the three to be built and was constructed on land that had been gifted by Henry Charles Howard, the 13th Duke of Norfolk (also the Earl of Surrey). The foundation stone was laid by his wife, Lady Charlotte, Countess of Surrey, using an engraved silver trowel, in front of a huge crowd.
“With this trowel, Charlotte, Countess of Surrey, laid the foundation stone of St. Mary’s Church, Sheffield, 12 October 1826.”
The foundation stone contained a bottle in which were deposited coins and documents, but a few weeks later, a letter to the Sheffield Independent revealed that the stone had been removed the same night, and the bottle conveyed to the vicar’s house so that it would not be stolen.
The country was amid depression due to suspended credit and impoverished markets and the cutlery industry had suffered badly. For this reason, workmen employed on clearing the site and preparing the foundations were ‘able-bodied and willing minded cutlers’ who had fallen on hard times.
The church was designed by Joseph Potter (1756-1842), a Lichfield-based architect, who early in his career had been employed by James Wyatt to supervise works at Lichfield Cathedral, Hereford Cathedral, St Michael’s Church in Coventry (now St Michael’s Cathedral) and the rebuilding of Plas Newydd, a house belonging to the 1st Marquess of Anglesey. He was the County Surveyor of Staffordshire for 45 years, as well as an engineer for the Grand Trunk Canal Company.
Potter’s eldest son, Robert (1795-1854), supervised the works at St. Mary’s, and he developed an attachment to the town because he opened an architectural practise here and built his home on Queens Road.
Building work was undertaken by Thomas Henry Webster of Stafford and the last stone was laid on top of the pinnacle at the southwest corner of the 140ft tower in November 1828, the occasion marked by the rising of the Standard of England and two other flags.
The church needed a minister and Rev. Sutton, Vicar of the Parish, appointed the Rev Henry Farish, Tutor of Queen’s College, Cambridge, at St. Mary’s in July 1829.
The church accommodated 2,000 people and had cost £13,927, the Church Building Commission covering the cost, as well as contributing £40 towards the cost of a bell in its tower. It was consecrated by the Archbishop of York on 21 July 1830.
However, its four-year construction had not been without its problems, but it took a letter to the Sheffield Daily Telegraph in October 1926, to reveal what had happened.
“By the original plan, the interior of the church was formed by two fine stone arcades into a handsome nave, with clerestory, and two side aisles, each vaulted, groined, and corbelled in stone. And the powerful buttresses, now on each side of the church, were built to take the weight and thrust of the internal vaulting. When the outside walls had scarcely reached the height of the parapet, an order came from headquarters to stop proceedings. It is supposed the million fund was about exhausted, but particulars were kept dark.
“This calamity completely stultified matters and new arrangements were made to finish the church with the least possible outlay. The result was the present lath and plaster imitation vaulting, supported by long thin cast iron props in lieu of stone pillars. This, I believe was the first and only instance of the use of cast-iron for such a purpose; its use here was owing to cheapness, and although these arrangements were a clever way out of a difficulty, they were always stigmatised by Robert Potter himself as an abortion and architectural curiosity, with which he disliked being associated.”
This revelation is backed by an old document that states that the plumbing, glazing, and imitation of stone on the walls and vaulted roof was by Robert Drury of Howard Street.
St. Mary’s Church had been in semi-rural surroundings. Its construction coincided with the growth of Sheffield, and once the old bridge over the nearby Porter Brook was replaced, the town expanded towards Little Sheffield, a hamlet that once stood in the London Road area that was swallowed up.
A lot has changed since then.
The west part of St. Mary’s was damaged by wartime bombing and was redeveloped by Stephen Welsh into a community centre in 1950. The division of the church was softened by APEC Architects in 1999-2000, who removed the 1950 work and created a new community centre of two floors and a mezzanine that filled all but the chancel and the two east bays of the nave, which is still used for worship.
At the beginning of World War Two, a decision was made to remove the stained glass windows and safely store them. Unfortunately, their location was lost until 2020 when Colin Mantripp, a wood carver from Buckinghamshire, bought what he thought was a box of fragments of stained glass at auction.
When he collected the box, it turned out to be an 8 foot by 3 foot wooden box full of 13 stained glass panels. The outside of the box had St. Mary’s scrawled on the side. After careful research, he discovered that the windows had come from St. Mary’s Church and offered to gift them back providing they could be put back where they belong. The church declined because it wouldn’t have been practical to put them back. The panels are probably from the east window, which was filled with a new commission by Helen Whitaker in 2008.
Finally, as already mentioned by a previous correspondent, let us remember Lily Hawthorne, who was a cleaner at St. Mary’s Church and was murdered here on December 4, 1968. There is plenty of speculation surrounding this tragic incident, but the facts are that Hugh Mason was tried at the Sheffield Assizes in January 1969 on a charge of murder and, after hearing the evidence of three doctors that he was suffering from mental illness, the jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. He was admitted to Broadmoor Hospital and later transferred to Sheffield’s Middlewood Hospital in 1972.
©2024 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.
All images / DJP /2024 unless stated.
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