Some buildings are built to endure. Others are less fortunate.
By rights, No. 19 Shrewsbury Road should not be here… but it is, the sole survivor of what became a 19th century terraced street. It is bordered by Turner Hill, a throwback to sloping cobblestone streets, and Granville Lane running behind.
The latter were probably laid out during the industrial expansion of Sheffield, and only 19 Shrewsbury Road, or the Old Sweet Factory as it became known, still stands.
To most people travelling up and down Shrewsbury Road it looks like a single storey building. However, a walk around the back shows it is two storeys high with a 4.4metre difference between the upper level entrance on Shrewsbury Road and the lower level yard entrance serving the rear of the property.
The area between Pond Hill and Shrewsbury Road had once been a wood, and when this building was erected as a Sunday school for a non-conformist chapel in 1836, it probably stood in semi-rural surroundings overlooking the Sheaf Valley.
Industrialisation changed the area, as did the construction of Midland Station down the slope in 1870, and the building was used as a brush factory.
By the mid-1890s the property was occupied by Charles Green, the considerably underrated sculptor and modeller, and subject of a separate post.
It caught fire in 1911 and most of the interior was destroyed, as were priceless works of art, including those by Francis Chantrey, that Green had collected.
Charles Green died in 1916 and it subsequently passed to Alfred Grindrod and Company, heating and ventilation engineers, a firm established in 1899, and which consolidated at its other premises on Charles Street in 1924.
By 1940, Samuel H. Walker had set up his sweet manufacturing business here. When he died, the business passed to his son and daughter, Harold, and Gladys. It was worked by Harold and Gladys’ husband, George Frederick Kay, while Gladys sold the sweets from a stall in the Norfolk Market Hall.
Many people will remember it was also a sweet shop, popular with students from nearby Granville College.
The business closed due to a compulsory purchase order in 1984, its fate unknown, but the building probably survived due to its Grade II listing two years later.
Sadly, the abandoned building fell into poor state of repair and a haunt for drug addicts.
In 1998 it was acquired by South Yorkshire Buildings Preservation Trust which embarked on a three year programme to restore the property.
It was let to Manchester Methodists Housing Association and Sheffield City Council before being sold in 2005.
Five years later it sold for £150,000 and was converted to residential use in 2012.
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