Sheffield City Council have rejected plans to turn a Grade II-listed building into apartments, but only on the basis that they would not provide enough affordable housing.
The planning application refers to 375-385 Glossop Road, a red-brick building built in the 1840s as a terrace of six town houses, three-storeys high, with a basement.
For younger people, the building was better known as Hanrahan’s, an American-style bar, and more recently as Loch Fyne Restaurant.
Sheffield developer Primesite UK, working closely with architects Cartwright Pickard and CODA, wanted to invest £4million in transforming the building into 27 one, two and three-bed apartments. A three storey rear extension would also have been created with a glass link atrium connecting a brick residential block to the rear of the building.
However, Conservation groups were concerned. The Georgian Group said that “This scheme had the potential to rob this terrace of much of its surviving architectural and historic interest and to cause harm to the surrounding conservation area.”
The Conservation Advisory Group called it a “gross overdevelopment” and said the 1840s character at the front, particularly the door surrounds, would have been harmed.
And the Hallamshire Historic Buildings group said: “Proposed aluminium cladding is a hideous disfigurement of the splendid Glossop Road elevation.”
The University of Sheffield was also concerned about the impact on activities at Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience and Barber House, which has delicate microscopy and imaging equipment, and also said that neighbouring properties on Glossop Road and Ruth Square would have been overshadowed.
Subject to planning consent, the conversion was due to start this year, but councillors refused the plans because the scheme did not provide enough affordable housing.
Back in the 1790s, this area was open fields, later owned by Phillip Gell who inherited the Broomhill estate in 1805 as a descendant of the Jessop family. He wanted to remain at Hopton, Derbyshire, and sold the land which was divided into building plots.
The land was bought by Peter Spurr who leased large parts of the estate for building, with this property constructed in the 1840s, and becoming home to several doctors, nurses, dentists, solicitors and teachers as well as those people associated with Sheffield’s trades. In 1899, part of the building became a private school operated by Eliza Depledge, the Sheffield Thorough Grounding School.
By 1951, the houses had been converted into flats, with three flats in each apartment, but the property fell into decline through the sixties and seventies.
In the early 1980s, the building was converted into a restaurant, knocked through to make one large ground floor and first floor, and opening as Hanrahan’s in 1984. It underwent several refurbishments in 1992, 1998-1999 (costing £500,000) and again in 2001.
It eventually closed and reopened as Casa before reverting to Hanrahan’s again in 2004. The Loch Fyne Restaurant opened in 2008 and closed in February 2016, after which the building has stood empty.
The Hanrahan’s site is just one of three prominent Sheffield sites being developed by Primesite.
The company is also redeveloping the former Wake Smith offices on Clarkehouse Road and the former Gilders VW car showroom at the junction of Ecclesall Road, Ecclesall Road South and Psalter Lane.
Together, the three projects have a development value of £12million.
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