Author: Delicto

Categories
Streets

Backfields – while you were sleeping last night

Backfields, looking from Division Street. Image: DJP/2022

While you were sleeping last night. Backfields, 3am. A forgotten thoroughfare amid 21st century redevelopment. A street with an undesirable history. Our ancestors imperilled this narrow street to crime – stabbings, muggings, and death, and I doubt that Sheffield has another street which suffered so many devastating fires.

In 1872, a Dr Hime expressed his opinion that it was not surprising that there should be so much sickness in the town while there were such places as Backfields and the neighbourhood.

Backfields led from Division Street to Wellington Street, off which were alleys and passageways with access to Coal Pit Lane, and Carver Street. It was an area of dirty, dense, back-to-back housing, and small workshops.

It was a cess-pit of filth, but it hadn’t always been like this.

Once upon a time, Backfields was exactly that. The fields beyond Coal Pit Lane (now Cambridge Street), once the distant boundary of town, was where cows grazed, sheep gambolled, and children played in the meadows.

Cometh the Industrial Revolution, no trace of its rural past existed.

In the same year that Dr Hime pontificated about Backfields, the Sheffield Independent provided a unique account: –

“On the eastern side of a yard there is a privy that must do duty for a considerable number of houses, and it is scarcely equal to the duty. The ashpit is more than full – it is overflowing. It has made an encroachment almost into the middle of the yard, in front of the doors of some of the houses and extends about twenty feet until its further extension laterally is stopped by the water branch.

“It is the same in every yard. Near St. Matthew’s Church there is an ashpit adjoining the street, piled up high beyond the retaining walls, and the rubbish falls onto the footpath leading to the houses. The passages are worthy of exploration. A visit to them will show that the ashpit question, though a grave one, is not the only point affecting the sanitary position in Sheffield. Air, light, ventilation, and crowding have much to do with it, and many of these places ought to be improved off the face of the earth.

“There is a passage, the old entrance to which has been removed by the erection of a privy, and the actual passage left would scarcely admit the entrance to a turtle-fed alderman. But there are other privies, not only as bad, but worse. One could not be seen because the doors were closed. The other could not be seen because the doors could not be closed. But here, as in the other case, a solution has been found. Human necessity is strong in resources; and the depositions that should be made in the privies are made in or thrown into the passage. These premises are stuck over with notifications from the Health Committee enjoining cleanliness on the inhabitants, in circumstances and under conditions where it is impossible to be clean!

“Yet again, in these jennels and passages, there are active business proceedings carried on. In one of them, there is a bakery, where spicy-looking buns were being made for the delectation of young Sheffield, which may be very excellent in their way, though fastidious people would prefer that the materials of their food should not be exposed and manipulated in such unsavoury localities. In another passage, a large tray of pork pies was met ready for the oven. These ‘Melton Mowbrays’ may be all that could be desired; and the givers of picnics will perhaps feel obliged for hints as to the possible sources of their pies and buns, or other delectable confections manufactured over conditions of sweetness that may impart a flavour and improve the appetite.”

It took years for things to improve. A hundred years later, the houses had finally gone while recession claimed industry and commerce. St. Matthews is perhaps the only reminder of our inglorious past.

Sheffield did little to redevelop Backfields and it is only now, with the Heart of the City project, that the area has been embraced. Tower blocks are not long from completion, and people, maybe descendants of those who ate spicy-buns and pork pies, are returning.

But, as somebody recently pointed out to me, are we simply building the slums of the future?    

©2022 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

Categories
Late Night Tales

The story of a window- while you were sleeping last night

While you were sleeping last night.  I walked down a lonely street. It was shadowy, nothing stirred, all buildings were in darkness. But there was one window that called out. It said, I am a window that used to be part of a busy factory. Little boys used to peer through my dirty glass and watch workmen in flat caps toiling in gloomy conditions. But then the machines stopped, and I was broken. A relentless desolation. The little boys grew older, and they longed to see what mysteries I shielded. I could have told them that there was nothing but discarded tools, benches, old newspapers, cigarette ends, and wretched rats. Only these old railings stalled their curiosity. And now, I am born-again. A young man lives here. Perhaps the great-grandson of one of those little boys of the past. He’s starting out in the university of life with his books and music. But he is vulnerable to prying eyes, and these railings still keep them out, and I offer him warmth and protection, and I tell all, that behind me, this boy is comfortable.

©2022 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

Categories
Companies

Ward’s Brewery – a business decision that might have had different consequences

The iconic Ward’s gateway was relocated and rebuilt after the brewery was demolished. Note that one of the letters is missing. Image: DJP/2022

I know somebody who once went to Dublin and sat on the doorstep of a traditional Irish pub and drank four cans of Ward’s Best Bitter. Much has been written about the closure of S.H. Ward in 1999, but there is a little-known chapter in the brewery’s history that eventually led to its downfall.

Septimus Henry Ward (1831-1905) was the seventh son of John Ward, a gentleman farmer of Pickering, North Yorkshire. He went to London, aged seventeen, and for twenty years was engaged in commercial pursuits.

He came to Sheffield in 1868 and bought a partnership in Kirby, Wright, and Co at the Sheaf Island Brewery on Effingham Road. This was later dissolved, and the company renamed S.H. Ward, although George Wright stayed on as a brewer.

In 1872, it amalgamated with the Old Albion Brewery of Lathom and Quihampton, in Ecclesall Road, and the new firm purchased the adjoining Soho Brewery from the executors of Thomas Bradley.

The site of the Sheaf Island brewery was sold, and Captain Weyland Mere Lathom, one of the former proprietors of the Old Albion Brewery, became Ward’s partner but took little active part in affairs.

The irony is that the Sheaf Island public house now stands on the former site. Image: DJP/2022

Under Septimus Ward, the business prospered and the Soho Brewery on Ecclesall Road was renamed the Sheaf Brewery, where brewing continued until its closure.

The partnership was dissolved in 1893, and the company converted into a limited company with Septimus becoming Managing Director. The Wright family still ran the day to day business, but ownership eventually reverted to the Ward family with a 51% share, and the Wright family owning the remaining 49%.

In later years, the Ward family reduced their brewing interests. The Wright family were given first option to buy and bought two shares to regain control of the business lost when George Wright had handed over ownership to Septimus due to bad investments in 1869.

Here’s where things get interesting.

Sometime during the 1970s, the Ward family was approached by Truman’s Brewery, East London, who were interested in expanding into the north. Truman bought approximately half the Ward’s interests then, and the remainder were bought after Grand Metropolitan acquired Truman in a marathon battle with Watney Mann in 1971.

Matters rested until 1974 when Grand Metropolitan made a bid for the 51% interest held by the Wright family.

Who were Grand Metropolitan?

This business began in 1934 and was a UK-based, international hotel and catering conglomerate that diversified into areas such as home milk and dairy deliveries (Express Dairies), steak restaurants (Berni Inns) and gambling (William Hill and Mecca Bingo Halls). It entered the beer, wine, and spirits markets through the purchase of two UK breweries including Watney Mann, which itself had recently taken over International Distillers and Vintners. In 1997, after more mergers and acquisitions, Grand Metropolitan finally merged with Guinness PLC to create the largest drinks company in the world, Diageo.

Subtle reminders of the site’s past. Image: DJP/2022

The Wright family had no wish to be absorbed into the Grand Met machine but reconciled themselves to the fact that they would probably sell it to someone sooner or later. It happened sooner, when the shares were sold to Vaux and Associated, a Sunderland-based brewer.

Vaux then tidied up matters and bought Grand Met’s 49% and Ward’s, with its brewery and 110 pubs, became a wholly owned subsidiary.

The former Ward’s site is now an apartment complex. Image: David Poole

S.H. Ward operated successfully until the 1990s, but events were taking place in Vaux Group’s boardroom that had devastating consequences. The business had diversified into Swallow Hotels and the board of directors accepted the advice of their corporate financier to close all their brewing concerns in 1999.

The Vaux Group was rebranded the Swallow Group and taken over by Whitbread a year later, and the pubs sold to Enterprise Inns.

The last brew at Sheaf Brewery was in June 1999, and despite valiant efforts by former board members to save it, the site was shut down. It was subsequently flattened, apart from the brewing tower and a few adjacent buildings, that were absorbed into a new apartment complex.

All these years later, with the benefit of hindsight, what might have happened had S.H. Ward been sold to Grand Metropolitan? Still gone? Or, one of Britain’s leading beer brands?

©2022 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

Categories
Big Houses

Crabtree Lodge – a picturesque old English mansion

Crabtree Ponds. Image: DJP/2022

I need you to use your imagination.

We are on Barnsley Road, heading towards Fir Vale, an area adjacent to Page Hall, where a large Slovakian Roma community lives. Page Hall has attracted national attention for all the wrong reasons. It has an unwanted reputation for crime and disorder.

But before we reach Fir Vale, and the sprawl of the Northern General Hospital, we come to a set of traffic lights, at the junction with Norwood Road. On the corner, we can see an abandoned and boarded-up former care home. Steel-mesh barriers surround it, and graffiti covers most parts. It won’t be long before someone sets it on fire, and it will be gone.

We carry on down Barnsley Road and turn left into Crabtree Close. We park the car and retrace our steps to a patch of scrubland where a sign welcomes you to Crabtree Ponds Local Nature Reserve.

Slipping through the trees, we descend a rough path, and at the bottom is a most unexpected sight. A beautiful expanse of water, with carefully made walkways around it, surrounded by tall trees and thick vegetation. All you can hear are birds singing, and the distant hum of traffic.

A man with a big dog sits on a bench. He is drinking from a cheap bottle of wine. He is drunk, but he doesn’t care that we have disturbed him. “Reyt, pal,” he calls, and sits back to enjoy the last of the day’s sun. We walk past him, along wooden planks suspended above water, and climb the steep hillside, back towards that decaying care home. Nearby, an ambulance wails its way to the hospital.

But imagine we could go back in time.

We are in the mid-1800s. Like today, the birds are singing, but the only traffic is a horse and cart gently clattering along the other side of a huge stone wall. We have walked around the ornamental pond, admired the fountain at the centre, and said good evening to a beautiful Victorian lady taking the summer air.

We climb the neat, terraced gardens, up exquisitely carved steps, absorb the sweet fragrances, and walk across the manicured lawn towards the big house. It looks splendid as the sun slips behind its sloping eaves, and shadows fall across the decorative gardens. It will soon be night.

We sit on a garden bench and look across the valley, to the meandering stream below, the ponds with their delicate fish, and the trees and fields that stretch over to Wincobank Hill.

Let us hope that this landscape remains as it is forever.

***

Crabtree Lodge, Pitsmoor, Sheffield. The only known sketch of the house is by N. Roberts in 1884. Image: Picture Sheffield

In 1884, a newspaper reported that Crabtree Lodge was a pleasantly-situated residence, in a district of Sheffield which had grown very rapidly. Pitsmoor had lost its rural charm, but this big house remained at the corner of Crabtree Lane.

It was a mansion in the picturesque old English style built in the nineteenth century, allegedly for a Mr Rotherham.

It later became home to Charles Atkinson, J.P. (1800-1879), chief partner in the firm of Marriott and Atkinson, Fitzalan Works, Attercliffe, one time Mayor, and Master Cutler. He had started as a travelling salesman for George Marriott and took his daughter as his first wife.

In 1875, he published a pamphlet called ‘Sheffield as it was; Sheffield as it is; Sheffield as it should be; by an old Grammar School boy of 1808.’

“I have endeavoured to show what Sheffield was 60 years ago, and what it is now. With all its increase of population and wealth, and yet without a good street as a leading thoroughfare, the centre of town a complete blot; the public buildings scarcely reaching to mediocrity and situated as they are in bye streets. While its merchants and manufacturers have made advancement in the race of improvement, the town itself remains much the same as it was in the days of Chaucer.”

On his death in 1880, the house and its contents were put up for sale and described thus: –

“The house contains a spacious entrance hall, noble dining room, excellent drawing rooms, library, and boudoir, loft corridors, good bedrooms, pantries, kitchens, larders, and every convenience. There is a four-stall stable with coach-house, and coachman’s room over. A small conservatory, with mushroom beds and potting sheds. The grounds of over 2 acres are tastefully laid out, being terraced up to the house, with an ornamental lake below, having a fountain in the centre. There is also a well-stocked and productive kitchen garden. There is also three acres of pastureland. It is held under two leases from the Duke of Norfolk.”

Crabtree Ponds. Image: DJP/2022

It was acquired in 1881 by Edward Tozer (1820-1890), a partner in the firm of Steel, Peech and Tozer, steel manufacturers, another Mayor of Sheffield, and twice Master Cutler of Hallamshire.

He was a rags-to-riches story, born in comparative poverty, and rising to become a partner in one of Sheffield’s best-known firms. He was born at Clifton, near Bristol, the son of a brewer, who came to Sheffield. Following his father’s death, he was brought up by his mother who opened a school in Victoria Street.

At the age of eleven, Tozer started work with Sanderson Brothers on West Street and remained to become Managing Director. He eventually left to and joined Henry Steel, T. Hampton, and William Peech in the management of the Phoenix Bessemer Works

It was during Tozer’s time that tragedy occurred at Crabtree Lodge.

In 1886, his youngest daughter, Margaret, aged 19, suffering from ‘religious mania’, went to an upstairs room and committed suicide by swallowing a bottle of sulphuric acid.

Edward Tozer died, aged 70,  in 1890, and Crabtree Lodge passed to Francis Markham Tindall, head of Thomas Marrian and Co, Burton Weir Brewery, Attercliffe, who died in 1902.

It is not without doubt that by now the city had encroached upon Crabtree Lodge and it spent years being offered for sale or to rent. In 1907, it was briefly home to Ernest Adames, a district manager of an assurance company, but appears empty until World War One.

Crabtree Ponds. Image: DJP/2022

In 1916, the Y.W.C.A. secured the lease as a hostel for the recreation and rest of women and girls coming to Sheffield and engaged in munition work.

“The house is going to be so nice when it is finished,” said Miss Goldie, the warden.

“The house has been unoccupied for some time, and the grounds have suffered in consequence, yet such imperfections as a break in the stone balustrade which surrounds the delightful terrace only seems to give an air of romance and makes the house appear older than it probably is.

“The large dining hall with panelled dado, surmounted with green duresco and dark oak ceiling, is considered one of the finest rooms in Sheffield, and here the girls will sit at tables laid for six and look out from a large lattice-paned window over a stretch of country blocked on the horizon by Wincobank Hill.”

After the war, Crabtree Lodge, referred to as The Hostel, was managed by a committee of ladies, although still affiliated to the Y.W.C.A., and lasted until 1927. It was advertised as a private hotel or boarding house but survived as a place for meetings and functions with garden fetes regularly taking place in the grounds. It was later converted into flats, and there is a suggestion that the grounds may also have been used as a T.A. Centre.

Crabtree Ponds. Image: DJP/2022
Crabtree Ponds. Image: DJP/2022

We might consider the area to be called Burngreave now, and the lodge was eventually demolished, the site used as  the Norbury Home for Elderly People.

But its gardens and ponds remained and today form Crabtree Ponds, a large area of standing water abundant with aquatic life such as rudd, roach, perch, crucian carp, sticklebacks and even eels. Bats fly from nearby Roe Woods to feed on the ponds.

Former Norbury Home for Elderly People. Image: DJP/2022
Former Norbury Home for Elderly People. Image: DJP/2022
Crabtree Ponds. Image: DJP/2022

©2022 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

Categories
Buildings

The Mount – Flockton’s Folly is about to go full circle

The Mount. View from landscaped gardens towards portico on southern elevation. Axis Architecture

History has the gift of repeating itself, and this applies to one of Sheffield’s forgotten masterpieces. I am referring to The Mount, on the north side of Glossop Road, at the top of the hill, in which a listed planning application has been submitted by Broomgrove Properties and Axis Architecture to convert the Grade II* listed property  into fifty-five residential apartments.

Its beauty is lost amidst the urban sprawl of Broomhill, but once upon a time this was an ambitious attempt to recreate the grand terraces of Bath’s Royal Crescent and London’s Regent’s Park. It was built between 1830-1832 by William Flockton, aged 26, a builder, and forever famous as one of Sheffield’s leading architects.

Pevsner describes it as “a palace-fronted terrace of eight houses, seventeen bays long, with an Ionic giant portico of six columns carrying a pediment and end pavilions with giant columns in antis.”

Main portico of the Flockton range, southern elevation. Image: Axis Architecture
Newspaper advertisement from 1831. Interesting to note that in this proposal there are only six mansions. There were eight when it was built. Image: British Newspaper Archive

The Mount, located in rural surroundings, looked like a country house but contained several individual mansions. It was first advertised in 1832 and allowed prospective occupants to view a shell before adjusting the interior to individual needs.

It was referred to as ‘Flockton’s Folly’ because for the first eight years after construction it was only occupied by one person. But its popularity increased and became a place of literary fame when James Montgomery lived and died here, while John Holland, another noted Sheffield poet, lived in one of the houses – occupied by William Parkin for 33 years – until his own death.

The Mount, 1849. Built of stone with an Ioninic giant portico of six columns carrying a pediment in 1834 by architect William Flockton. It was the first home of the Wilsons of Snuff Mill fame. Once the home of James Montgomery. Image: Picture Sheffield

The fame of The Mount says that a ballot was once taken as to who should become the tenant of one of the houses.

Other well-known people who lived at The Mount included, Walton J. Hadfield, the City Surveyor who lived at number 2 from 1926 to 1934, James Wilkinson, the iron and steel merchant who lived at number 6 from 1837 to 1862 and George Wostenholm, the cutlery manufacturer, who lived at number 8 between 1837 and 1841. Numbers 14 and 16 were lived in by George Wilson, the snuff manufacturer, between 1857 and 1867, one house not being big enough for his family. While another George Wilson, who was managing director of Charles Cammell and Co for many years, also lived at The Mount.

In time, it was occupied by “headmasters, ministers, station masters, and all sorts of people.”

The Mount was used as the basis for the nearby Wesleyan Proprietary Grammar School, later Wesley College, and now King Edward VII School, in 1838.

The Mount, Glossop Road, Sheffield. 1900-1919. This image was originally part of the Tim Hale Photographic Collection. It was purchased at auction in September 2019 through donations from members of the public and a grant from the Graves Trust. Image: Picture Sheffield

In 1914, John Walsh, the department store owner, bought The Mount and served notice on its tenants. The need to expand his city centre store meant that his live-in shop assistants needed new accommodation. Numbers 10-16 were used for the purpose, and when the Blitz of 1940 destroyed the store, the building was used as temporary retail space for a year.

It was bought by United Steel Companies in 1958 and converted into offices, with extensive additions to the rear, by Sheffield architects Mansell Jenkinson Partnership, who also installed lifts. In 1967 it became the regional headquarters of British Steel Corporation and in 1978 was purchased by the insurance company General Accident, later becoming Norwich Union.

Existing galleried office entrance inserted into Flockton range as part of 1960’s office conversion. Image: Axis Architecture
View of typical room in Flockton range with dividing wall removed. Image: Axis Architecture

For a long time, The Mount was owned by Aviva (formed from the merger of Norwich Union and Commercial General Union) but was rented to A+ English, a language school, which carried out significant improvements to the offices.

The latest planning application calls for fifty-five residential apartments (with a mix of 1, 2, and 3, bedroom and studio units), including single-storey infill extensions at ground floor level, a single-storey rooftop extension to the existing annex, formation of four basement lightwells to the listed range, and provision of internal/external residents’ parking and associated landscaping. In addition, the proposals allow the removal of the through vehicular route, with access from Newbould Lane closed, and with an infill extension at ground floor level to provide in effect a new main entrance for the development and space for a concierge.

Ornate fireplace. Image: Axis Architecture
The Mount. Internal view looking towards north elevation of Flockton range. Image: Axis Architecture

©2022 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

Categories
Places

“That’s not silver. It’s stainless steel, and it’s made in Sheffield.”

Savoy Theatre, alongside the Savoy Theatre, Strand, London

I had to make a hurried and brief visit to London. There is somebody you need to meet, said my friend. Come straightaway. The fact I heard this at 9am, and had only been asleep for four hours, made it an interesting journey. And so, hungover, I found myself waiting outside the world famous Savoy Hotel in The Strand. I would like to say the meeting was in the hotel, but it would take place in a nearby Costa Coffee.

I watched London rush by and looked up at the hotel entrance. “Fantastic engineering, isn’t it?” said a voice behind me. “It’s stainless steel,” said the member of staff. “Do you know they once found a dead body on top of the glass canopy?” I didn’t, and later found out it was true. In 1935, a down-and-out, one of the unemployed, exhausted, and defeated, had painfully climbed on to the shining stainless steel canopy over the entrance to the hotel to die of starvation.

And this got me thinking. Stainless steel. Was there a Sheffield connection? On my way home, I found out that there was.

“Isn’t it lovely?” exclaimed a girl gazing at the entrance to the adjacent Savoy Theatre. “Fancy a theatre front made of silver!” The year was 1931, and her boyfriend knew better. “That’s not silver. It’s stainless steel, and it’s made in Sheffield.”

But he was only partly right. The famous Sheffield product was not, strictly speaking, stainless steel, but a development of it – chromium nickel steel – which could be polished up to a degree that eclipsed the brilliance of polished silver and retained its sheen in any atmosphere.

‘Staybrite’ was a product of Thomas Firth and Sons, and in the 1920s and 1930s was making its mark in London. It was used for the imposing entrance to the Oxford Street Corner House, and combined with glass, there were the massive entrances to the Savoy Hotel and Savoy Taylor’s Guild, the beautiful rotating doors of the Strand Palace Hotel, and glittering turnstiles at the Olympia.

And there were examples abroad. Including the main entrance and ticket barriers of Geneva railway station, ornamental gates at Berne, and the doors of the Palais de Justice at Lausanne.

It was all manufactured in Sheffield.

Harry Brearley was the man credited with the invention of ‘rustless steel,’ but he left Brown Firth Laboratories in 1915 after a disagreement. It was his successor, Dr W.H. Hatfield who created the so-called “18/8” – Staybrite, still the most widely used alloy of this type.

The testing of it was rigorous. It was buried in a garden for six months and came up gleaming as new. It was attached to a vessel bound on a nine months’ voyage and dragged through the waves for that long period, hauled aboard, and found to be bright as polished silver.

Its use is ubiquitous now, but how did the Savoy Hotel come to get this Sheffield product? It was all about art-deco. A young architect, Howard Robertson, wrote to the hotel pitching for work, and in 1929 he revealed his most famous and prominent design – The Savoy’s iconic ‘Staybrite’ sign which runs the width of Savoy Court.

Sheffield-made ‘Staybrite’ canopy, and the figure of Count Peter of Savoy

©2022 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

Categories
Streets

A narrow cobbled lane with a violent past

Penton Street, looking towards Bailey Lane. Image: DJP/2022

I love those Sheffield streets that people struggle to identify with. This is typical of Penton Street, a short, cobbled road that slopes diagonally between Trippet Lane and Bailey Lane. It might serve little purpose nowadays, but if we go back in time, this was a residential street amidst factories.

This street was once a haven for criminals, many living in old houses deemed dangerous, injurious to health, and unfit for human habitation. It was no surprise that violent attacks and street robberies around this narrow, congested street, were not uncommon. There were tales of suicide, domestic abuse, and personal tragedy, within these slums.

To get an idea of what Penton Street was like, the oldest known novel about Sheffield, Put Yourself In His Place, written in 1870 by Charles Reade, a contemporary of Dickens and Elliott, is loosely based on the true story of a London woodcarving-tool maker, James Bacon Addis, who was brought to the town by Ward and Payne, and provided an account of the ‘Sheffield Outrages,’ the battle to protect union membership, often through violent means.  And Penton Street was always at the heart of the unrest.

In 1886, the street was at the centre of a riot at the factory of Ward and Payne, edge tool and sheep shear manufacturers. A crowd of two thousand youths, congregated in Bailey Lane, Trippet Lane, Penton Street, and West Street, and armed with stones, smashed hundreds of panes of glass. The rioters believed that German grinders had arrived to replace workers sacked by the company. In truth, no foreign workers had been employed.

A big fire in 1929 at the factory of F.G. Gill, putty knife manufacturers, threatened to burn down all the houses in Penton Street. People evacuated their homes and hastily removed furniture before the fire was brought under control.

Industry has long gone, as have the houses, but a huge block of student accommodation now lines one side of the street. And, of course, Trippet’s Lounge Bar, formerly the premises of Bowler J. Dewsnap, cutlery manufacturers, occupies the triangle of land on the right.

©2022 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

Categories
Buildings

Boots on West Street is an architectural treat

Boots, West Street, Sheffield. Designed by Albert Nelson Bromley. Image: DJP/2022

The Victorians knew how to build shops. And this is a perfect example of elaborate architecture. It is Boots, on West Street, at its corner with Regent Street. There has been a Boots here since 1890, which makes it one of Sheffield’s oldest shops.

“It was built in Free Renaissance house style, executed in light brown faience, with big Flemish gables, an open parapet, and a cupola on the corner with a dome,” says Pevsner.

Forget the shop, it is what happens at roof level that intrigues me most. How often do people go up there? What secrets lie within that cupola? What will the view from it look like?

Boots was established in 1849 by John Boot, but it was his son, Jesse, who built the company into a household name with stores all over the world. I’ve mentioned before that its first chemist branch outside Nottingham was at Spital Hill, and Sheffield played an important part in its growth.

The building we see is not the original shop. The old store was three storeys high, comprising a commodious shop, with seven large plate-glass windows, on the first floor six stock rooms, and on the second floor, six similar rooms. The site itself was held on an 800 year lease from 1 October 1825.

Boots Cash Chemists, No 252-254, West Street (Store 41). This original store was demolished and rebuilt in 1905-06. Image: Picture Sheffield

In 1905, the old store was rebuilt, and Boots took temporary premises opposite for its chemist, while fancy goods were sold from a shop higher up at the corner with Victoria Street.

The new shop opened in 1906 and was designed by Albert Nelson Bromley (1820-1934), whose work in Sheffield had already included a Boots branch in 1904 at Attercliffe. (It also survives, home to Samara Lounge, but for years as the Zeenat Restaurant).

West Street and Regent Street. From the Boots Scribbling Diary of 1906. Image: Walgreens Boots Alliance Heritage

The West Street branch followed the company tradition of purpose-built branches, faced in caramel-coloured glazed terracotta, often with shaped gables or corner turrets. The detailing followed French Renaissance and English Jacobean architecture, often including hybrid sea creatures in its decoration.

A good example of this can be found at Pelham Street, once Boots’ flagship Nottingham store, now occupied by Zara. West Street, although built on a much smaller scale, is a replica, still in original form, except for the disappearance of the corner clock. The terracotta may be Doulton’s Carraraware, which was specified for Boots’ branch in Southend in 1915.

Boots, West Street, Sheffield. Look closely at the elaborate decoration featuring sea creatures. A clock has long disappeared. Image: DJP/2022

Albert Nelson Bromley, the architect, was born in Stafford, and moved to Nottingham to live with his uncle, architect Frederick Bakewell. He joined his office and became a fellow member of RIBA in 1872. He was on the point of taking up a post in Manchester when he was encouraged to spend time sketching buildings on the continent.

Between 1872-73 he visited 90 towns and cities, including Bruges, Chartres, Heidelberg, Prague, Venice, Siena, Athens, and Constantinople. In ‘Work and Sport: Memories of an Architect’ (1934), he stated that the object of the book was “mainly to reduce to readable proportions his ‘Continental Diary of my Architectural Travels.’

Gifted in the use of the pencil, pen, and brush, he executed watercolours of high artistic merit.

On returning to England, Bromley re-joined his uncle’s practice although their partnership was dissolved in 1876. He became principal architect for Nottingham School Board and did work for Nottingham Tramway Company. But it was his work for Boots that he is best remembered for, a relationship that lasted into the 1920s.

Over a hundred years later, this modern-day Boots is a far cry from its origins, described back in the day as a ‘Chemist, Fine Art Dealer, and Bookseller.’

Special thanks to Kathryn A Morrison for providing historical date about Boots and Albert Nelson Bromley.

Boots, West Street, Sheffield. It is likely that ground-floor plate glass windows originally extended up Regent Street. The floors above are now used as offices. Image: DJP/2022

©2022 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

Categories
Buildings Streets

Cambridge Street – while you were sleeping last night

Image: David Poole

Cambridge Street at 3am. The changing face of our city centre.

Grosvenor House, home to HSBC, with the reflection of the almost-complete Isaacs Building opposite. Both buildings form part of Sheffield’s Heart of the City development.

Once upon a time, this was the site of Barrasford’s Hippodrome presenting music hall acts and films projected from the Barrascope. It was soon renamed the Hippodrome Theatre of Varieties and was Sheffield’s largest theatre. 

It eventually became the Hippodrome Cinema, demolished in 1963, and the Grosvenor House Hotel and retail outlets built in its place. History likes reinventing itself, and the hotel was itself demolished in 2016-2017.

Hippodrome Theatre opened 23 December 1907 as a Music Hall. Became a permanent cinema on 20 July 1931. In 1948, came under the management of The Tivoli (Sheffield) Ltd. Closed 2 March 1963 and demolished. Image: Maurice Parkin/Picture Sheffield 

©2022 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

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Streets

Those glass panels beneath our feet

I was on Trippet Lane the other day, answering a telephone call, when I looked at my feet and realised, I was standing on a piece of history. Beneath were glass panels that were common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More importantly, it tells us that there is a lot more going on underneath our pavements than we can see.

These are pavement lights that were installed to illuminate the space below, usually a basement or cellar. It was a way to lighten spaces where natural light wasn’t available and a way to avoid using gas, oil, and candles. It also indicates that basements often extended underneath the pavement and sometimes beneath the road as well.

The earliest pavement light was developed in America by Edward Rockwell in 1834 using single large round glass lenses set in an iron frame. The lenses often broke and it was Thaddeus Hyatt who corrected the faults with his Hyatt Light of 1854. They had protruding iron knobs, designed to protect the glass, and even if the lenses were broken the panel would still have been safe to walk on.

They first appeared in London in the late 1880s in the form of cast iron frames glazed with cut squares of glass. In time, the glass was replaced with pressed glass prism lenses designed to transmit as much light as possible. It wasn’t long before other towns and cities, including Sheffield, adopted them too.

Pavement lights were extremely popular, but they weren’t without problems. It was the responsibility of shopkeepers to replace broken squares, and it wasn’t uncommon for people to sustain injury after catching their heel in a hole. There were stories of small children getting their foot stuck in them and in World War One, wounded soldiers were reported to have had their crutch caught in them. Discarded cigarettes dropped through a broken panel were also the cause of many a fire below.

Pavement lights waned in popularity with the introduction of the electric light but have made a comeback in recent years.

They are far more common in Sheffield than you probably realise and provide clues that there are underground secrets waiting to be explored.

©2022 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.