Here’s a man responsible for bringing some of the biggest names in music to the backstreets of Sheffield. Elliot Kennedy, born in 1969, songwriter and record producer, owner of Steelworks Studios on Brown Street.
He started writing songs at 13, formed a band at Dinnington High School and has made million sellers for the stars, including Mary J. Blige, the Spice Girls, Celine Dion, Boyzone, Bryan Adams, S Club 7 and Take That.
Kennedy’s first record that saw the stars align was Take That’s Everything Changes, co-written with Gary Barlow (1993). The next milestone record was Say You’ll Be There – his first global success for the Spice Girls. Kennedy went on to have a hit record in the charts every month for the next five years.
“It became this incredible factory for writing and producing records – S Club, Five, Billy Piper. Then I had a big hit with Boyzone, Picture of You (1996).”
Kennedy wrote Baby When You’re Gone (1998) with Bryan Adams, featuring Mel C, and he also penned the Aretha Franklin and Mary J. Blige song that won a Grammy, Never Gonna Break My Faith written for the 2006 film Bobby, about Robert F. Kennedy.
Still making hits, Kennedy’s branched into musicals – Finding Neverland and Around the World in 80 Days with Gary Barlow and Calendar Girls with Tim Firth.
And I bet if you bumped into him in the street you wouldn’t have a clue who he was.
In 1964, the Belfast Telegraph reported on a proposed new housing development at Cullingtree Road in the Northern Ireland city. The multi-storey flats were going to be based on Park Hill in Sheffield, a radical ‘streets in the sky’ development, completed in 1961.
The newspaper sent a reporter to Sheffield and was invited to look inside several flats. His observations make fascinating reading now, presenting a time when people were adjusting to dwellings far removed from the slum housing they’d left behind.
What soon became clear, was that people living at Park Hill were living a simple existence.
“Free from the ‘lure’ of consumer goods, the older people in these flats seem to have disposed of most of their surplus possessions before moving in; the younger ones have not yet started seriously collecting them.
“There were few books or magazines in the living rooms, and I can’t remember seeing a single piece of hi-fi equipment.”
However, the reporter had an eye on the future and forecast that younger residents would soon fill up the flats.
“They will soon need record players, tape recorders, cine cameras, sports equipment, and their own books, records, musical instruments, typewriters and transistor radios.”
And the reporter lamented a lack of storage space.
“Half a century ago, cleaning was done with a dust-pan and brush. Today, 76 per cent of all households uses a vacuum cleaner, and this needs special storage.”
The arrangement of the living areas struck a curious mind.
“Who, fifty years ago, would have forecast that by 1964 practically every household in the country would have a television set? It alters the arrangement of most living rooms – competing with the fireplace as the focus of interest.
“It might be reasonable to suppose that by 1984 the traditional type of house or flat with box-like rooms will be completely inadequate to the needs of the average household.
“By then, it is likely that many flats will be built as shells containing the floors and staircases with traditional internal walls around the bathroom and WC only. The remaining area, which will be used for the kitchen, sitting and living areas and bedrooms, will be left clear to be divided by the occupier.”
Finally, the reporter noted rows of parked cars outside.
“When the flats were designed and built nobody imagined a time when people who lived in them would own one, or even two cars. Consequently, no garages were built.”
In the end, financial concerns meant the proposed model in Belfast didn’t proceed with only a fraction being built.
Constructed in the mid-sixties, the Divis Complex, consisted of Divis Tower and 12 eight-storey terraces and flats, all named after the nearby Divis Mountain.
The photograph is by Live Projects, a pioneering educational initiative introduced by the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield, which in 1999 restored a flat on Gilbert Row, at Park Hill, installing retro fittings and furniture.
If you want to see Sheffield at its saddest, then look at Slade in Flame (1975), a bleak and sour look at the 1960s rock music scene.
Slade as a band had been an incredible success in Britain, but probably didn’t realise they’d peaked by 1974. Their manager, Chas Chandler, suggested making a movie, and so, Noddy Holder, Don Powell, Dave Hill and Jim Lea, found themselves showcasing the rise and demise of a made-up northern rock band called Flame.
Directed by Richard Loncraine, Slade in Flame was filmed in the second half of 1974, and subject of enormous enthusiasm when Sheffield, along with Nottingham, London and Brighton, was chosen as one of its locations.
There’s no doubt that Sheffield got the short straw when it came to the glitz and glamour, but the film is a revelation because it shows a city that has since disappeared.
Sheffield served up the hardship of working-class society and gave its best shot when offering up its depressing 1970s settings.
Photograph by Walkley History
This is the type of film that will probably show up on Talking Pictures TV one day.
When it does, look out for shining roles from the now-demolished Kelvin Flats, a polluted canal, slum-like terraced housing on Fox Road and Otley Street (long gone) at Walkley, and Douglas Road at Parkwood Springs.
Shortly afterwards, these houses, already boarded-up and convenient for filming, were bulldozed, the areas re-landscaped with no evidence to see of their shabby past.
Yes, it makes dismal viewing, but this was the Sheffield of yesterday.
Photograph by Walkley History
Slade in Flame got mixed reviews when it was released the following year. Teen audiences expecting a Slade romp-a-rama were left bewildered, not really getting what it was all about.
“It was quite a heavy movie,” said Noddy Holder years later. “It was about fallings-out in bands and all the repercussions they cause. There was a lot of violence and it had a very downbeat ending.”
However, the film has received critical acclaim since. The BBC’s movie critic Mark Kermode rates it as one of his favourites and calls it the Citizen Kane of rock musicals.
If one man can be held responsible for defining Sheffield’s skyline, then it must be John Lewis Womersley (1909-1989), the City Architect between 1953 and 1964.
During his term, Sheffield’s housing grew upwards with multi-storey flats constructed at Low Edges, Park Hill, Hyde Park, Netherthorpe and Woodside. It was Womersley’s response to 13,000 families on the council’s waiting list and 10,000 condemned properties waiting to be demolished.
Womersley had previously been Borough Architect in Northampton, where he was responsible for the town’s first ten-storey block. In Sheffield, he presented an uncompromising vision of the future, one shared by the Labour council.
According to Ivan Morris, who worked in Sheffield City Council’s planning department until 1979, Womersley was “A blunt no-nonsense Yorkshireman with a burning desire to maintain quality of life by achieving high standards in his work.”
In his eleven years, Sheffield was a hive of building activity, his record perhaps stained by today’s social problems in surviving tower blocks.
“Time and hindsight must not be allowed to judge too harshly the mark that Lewis Womersley left on the city,” said Morris in 1989. “For he gave his whole-hearted efforts unstintingly against economic restraints.
“Certainly, those who remembered the sordid and degrading conditions of the overcrowded back-to-back slums had cause for acknowledgement.”
His most famous legacy must be Park Hill, the “streets in the sky” claiming international recognition for Sheffield but dividing opinion across the city.
It is now Grade II* listed, the subject of a £100million refurbishment into upmarket apartments, business units and social housing (even though it seems to be taking an age to complete).
“Park Hill was certainly something of a masterpiece and is still relatively popular,” said one of his successors, Andrew Beard, over thirty years ago. “But with Hyde Park I feel he pushed the concept further than it was capable of going.”
And another of his projects, the Gleadless Valley estate, a mix of urban housing and landscape, described as “Mediterranean in appearance” when it was built between 1955 and 1962, might now be past its best.
But was that the fault of the architect, or simply under-investment in maintaining it properly?
Gleadless Valley estate
Most pronounced in housing, his work also extended to public buildings – schools, colleges, bus garages, fire stations and libraries. Amongst these we must mention Granville College and Castle Market, both demolished, but the former West Bar Police Station survives as the Hampton by Hilton Hotel.
Awarded a CBE in 1962, Womersley left Sheffield two years later, joining the Leslie Hugh Wilson partnership in Manchester, and finally retiring in 1978.
Almost £20million in funding has been secured to bring forward the latest phase of the redevelopment of Sheffield’s Park Hill Estate.
Joint venture (JV) partners Urban Splash and Places for People have agreed a £19.9million, two-year funding deal with Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking Real Estate and Housing.
The development finance agreement will support Phase 2 of the development, which is set to come to market in the spring.
This phase will comprise 195 homes, including one-, two- and tree-bedroom flats and two-bedroom townhouses retaining the duplex and double aspect layout with balconies. It will also feature 20,000s sq ft of mixed-use commercial space with the potential for offices and workspaces, as well as a new café or restaurant and terrace.
Contractors are currently on site with completion of the project due in 2021.
Photograph by archdaily
Work on Phase 3 of the Park Hill development is also underway. A 356-bed student accommodation building is being developed by Alumno Developments and is due to be occupied in September 2020.
Phase 4, comprising a new S1Artspace alongside further residential units, has also been approved.
Park Hill, located on a hill above the city’s railway station, is one of the Sheffield’s best-known landmarks.
The property was built in 1961 and was one of the first Brutalist buildings in the UK. It was awarded Grade II*-listed status in 1998.
The estate has been the subject of several TV documentaries and a musical, Standing at the Sky’s Edge.
Next year marks the sixtieth anniversary of Park Hill flats, a remarkable milestone for a series of buildings that people in Sheffield either love or hate. The fact that Park Hill is still standing is perhaps even more significant.
Visitors to Sheffield cannot fail to notice them, a massive cliff which rises steep and high to the east behind Sheffield Railway Station.
Sheffield had wanted to extend its boundaries in 1951 and was unable to do so. To continue slum clearance, and unable to extend spreading suburban estates, the council looked at flats on restricted sites near the city centre.
Park Hill was the idea of John Lewis Womersley (1909-1989), the City Architect between 1953 and 1964. He looked at the Park district, once nicknamed “Little Chicago” during the gang wars of the twenties, where swathes of housing had been demolished in the 1930s.
Photograph by Paul Dobraszczyk
Womersley engaged Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith, two young architects who’d met in London, both exploring the concepts of long slabs, inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation in Marseilles in 1951.
Initially recruited to begin a scheme at Norfolk Park, Womersley gave them Park Hill and Hyde Park to work on instead, assisted by Frederick Nicklin.
Unité d’habitation, Marseilles
The go ahead was given in 1955, work commencing in 1957 and completed in 1961. The result was four blocks, varying in height from four storeys at the south, and to fourteen at the north, the slope allowing the roof-line to remain level.
Park Hill’s architecture was defined as “Brutalist,” an expression created in Sweden in 1950 by Hans Asplund, son of the architect Gunnar Asplund, after which the idea was taken up fervently by a generation of architects and critics, the most vociferous being Peter and Alison Smithson and Raynor Banham, and adopted by the likes of young Lynn and Smith.
Photograph by Paul Dobraszczyk
“The moral crusade of Brutalism for a better habitat through built environment probably reaches its culmination at Park Hill,” said Banham.
The layout was designed with fragmentary polygons, linked by bridges of 135 and 112 degrees, to enable the 10ft wide access decks on every third floor to shift from side to side so each got the sun. The blocks were arranged to create courts within which a primary and nursery school were eventually built, together with playgrounds. These were originally furnished with furniture by abstract sculptor, John Forrester, who also advised on the modelling and colouring of the facades on the blocks, street lighting and footpaths.
In total, there were 994 dwellings for 3,448 persons (high density housing at 193 persons per acre), in a mixture of one-two bedroom flats and two-four bedroom maisonettes. Each flat was initially provided with a Garchey waste system, with units below the kitchen sink, at the time a new idea only seen at Quarry Hill in Leeds and Spa Green at Clerkenwell.
Park Hill was officially opened by Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the Labour Party, a not unsurprising choice considering that Sheffield’s Labour council had been an advocate of Womersley’s radical vision of a “new” city. After all, when it was built there were 13,000 families on the council waiting list and 10,000 condemned properties waiting to be demolished.
Almost immediately, Park Hill flats were greeted as “a Modernist icon.”
Photograph by Paul Dobraszczyk
Keen to retain the community feeling of these old streets, Park Hill’s interlinking corridors was the answer to those people who felt isolated in an ordinary multi-storey block, every front door creating an illusion of stepping out into the street.
In “Ten Years of Housing in Sheffield,” published by Sheffield Corporation’s housing development committee, the intention at Park Hill was explained: –
“At Park Hill, in place of the 4ft wide balconies serving each floor, promenade decks 10ft wide and open to the air, are provided in every third floor within the main building mass. As the buildings are in a continuous ‘slab’ form there is thus a complete system of circulation around the whole site, the highest deck being on the storey below the top.
“The front doors to the dwellings open from the decks… which… fulfil the function of ‘Streets’ within the building, along which prams can be pushed, and milk trolleys driven.
“Being covered from the weather and free from normal vehicular traffic, they form ideal places for daily social contact. The decks are, in fact, extensions of the dwellings so far as both children and adults are concerned. The child’s earliest play needs are in general catered for inside the flat… later, the decks extend his range on a level with his front door. Later still, he can use the various play areas at ground level.”
Photograph by Paul Dobraszczyk
It was a romantic dream.
“When they were first built the environment was beautiful and there was a great community spirit because so many of the people on the old Park estate came back to live in the flats,” said resident Harold Fairbrother, in 1989.
But, Nikolaus Pevsner, the architectural historian, had early reservations.
“There can alas be no doubt that such a vast scheme of closely-set high blocks of flats will be a slum in half or century or less.”
Pevsner’s prophecy turned out to be accurate and by the 1980s the vision had turned sour.
Photograph by Paul Dobraszczyk
Roy Hattersley had been chairman of Sheffield City Council’s public works committee when Park Hill was built. When the flats were first considered for listing by English Heritage in 1996, he was thoughtful with his comments.
“Living cheek by jowl was not the risk as it is today. Aerosol sprays had barely been invented and there was little graffiti on the walls. Packs of youths did not stalk the galleries late at night. The occasional drunk urinated in the lift, but they were not systematically vandalised out of operation.
“Park Hill was built to meet the needs of the people. If it no longer achieves that aim, it should be demolished.”
As it happens, Park Hill was given a Grade II* listing in 1998, effectively eradicating talk of demolition, and making it Britain’s largest listed building until superseded by The Barbican in London.
A caretaker at Park Hill summed up the state of affairs in a television documentary at the time. “She is an old lady fallen on hard times.”
Photograph by Paul Dobraszczyk
In 2004, Urban Splash won the contract to revive the decayed estate, turning the flats into upmarket apartments, business units and social housing. Two blocks (including the North Block, the tallest part of the buildings) were initially cleared, leaving only their concrete shell. Due to start in 2007, Phase 1 was put on hold due to the recession, eventually starting in 2009 and open to residents in 2010-2011.
With over £100million spent so far, Phases 2 and 3 are now underway, with Phase 4, comprising a new S1Artspace alongside further residential units, already approved.
Goodness me, here’s a story that seems to have passed by unnoticed. It seems that The Moor has been sold from under our feet, with Aberdeen Standard Investments offloading the biggest asset in its property fund to New River real estate investment trust.
The deal was completed in December after being put on the market with an £89.4million price tag.
The Moor, once again installed as Sheffield’s foremost shopping street, accounted for seven per cent of the £1.3billion Aberdeen UK Property Fund.
Back in December, outflows from Aberdeen Standard’s fund spiked after investors were spooked following the suspension of rival manager M&G’s Property Portfolio. M&G was forced to suspend trading in its £2.5billion property fund after investors rushed to withdraw money.
The Moor has thrived under the ownership of Aberdeen Standard Investments, with the addition of Moor Markets, the Light Cinema, Lane7 Bowling Alley, and new retailers including Primark, Next, River Island and H&M.
However, with retail in steady decline, it might appear that Aberdeen Standards Investments has divested of The Moor while the going is good.
It remains to be seen whether the next phases of development will go ahead, including the renovation of the block occupied by Boots, Melody, Lloyds Bank, Bodycare and Halifax Bank.
The deal was the latest in a string of acquisitions for New River, including a retail park in Northern Ireland for £40million, and sites in Aberdeen, Inverness, Dundee and the Isle of Wight.
In 1861, The Builder, a journal of architecture, paid a visit to Sheffield to discover the appeal of the town, with its swiftly growing population, and one commended worldwide for industry and enterprise.
High-ranking officers at the Town Hall welcomed the magazine, expecting a fair and favourable travelogue, but when the article appeared on 5 October, it was titled ‘The Sanitary State of Sheffield’.
The observations were undoubtedly honest, the consequences lasting for the next hundred years, and indication that living in those long-ago simple days was bleak.
Brace yourselves, the “best bits” make awkward reading.
“Street scavenging appears to be but imperfectly applied at Sheffield. The streets are partially swept before the shops are open in the morning; consequently, when these are to be cleaned out, the sweepings which are thrown upon the streets remain all day long, to be trodden into a thick greasy crust.
“Proceeding down Victoria Station Road, past the cattle market, we arrive at an area of nearly two acres in extent, completely covered by huge hillocks of filth.
“A special heap in one corner belongs to the Duke of Norfolk, as the sweepings of his Grace’s markets and properties are brought here, and upon which children, not pigs, are grovelling, whilst one infant sits, playing with offal, and gnawing a decayed leek.
“Leaving the neighbourhood, we skirt the canal basin, picking our way between mounds of sifted coal ash, mill and engine coal, iron bars, and steel bars – a rusty, dusty, gritty place to remember, passing the Corn Exchange and presently come into High Street.
“This is the centre of retail commerce, and like all Sheffield streets is inconveniently narrow, its shops poor and dingy, improving but little in this respect when it takes the name of Fargate.
“The same blotchy encrustations on the roads, and the same channels running across the footpaths, with liquid manure from houses and stables, are too frequent.
“The water provided for general use being of a colour we do not esteem nor envy, we are bent on visiting the sources of supply.
“Through a suburban district of small villas and large houses, climbing up a further ascent, we make our observations upon the first great dam (now Crookes Valley Park). Dead leaves are floating upon the surface, and in one bend, the corner nearest the Dam House, a thick slime was upon the waters. Moreover, ducks were swimming in it.
“The next dam, communicated by an open channel, had horses and cattle drinking from it in the corner of a field.
“Higher up, from dam to dam, and up to the great Hadfield reservoir, the same imperfections present themselves: banks that should be lined with sloping stones, and not an atom of decayed vegetation allowed to mix with the water, are planted to the water’s brink with overhanging trees and rank grass and weeds growing apace upon the shallow muddy shores, the water highly-discoloured and slimy.
“Considering the pulmonary diseases to which Sheffield workmen are especially liable, it is a miracle that they do not insist upon the removal of every other exciting cause of ill-health.
“The workman breathes an atmosphere impregnated with excremental and putrefactive smells and charged with dust. This immense concourse of people live, eat, drink, and sleep in a space crammed with cesspits full of their own ordure, and where the contents of their heaped-up ash and offal middens are retained within sight and scent of their dwellings.”
If bilious readers of The Builder were still unsure about visiting, then the last line was probably meant for them. “There is much to interest in Sheffield, much to praise.” And that was it.
This sorry-looking statue of George Canning, the British Prime Minister who from 1825 to 1827 saved Greece from conquest by the Turks, stands in the George Canning Square in Athens.
But what is its connection to Sheffield?
George Canning, who was Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, gave diplomatic support to the Greeks in the struggle against the Turks for freedom and ensured the eventual creation of an independent Greek state. In 1827, he signed the Treaty of London with Russia and France, with the object of securing Greek independence.
Canning’s successor as Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, tried to undo his work by making a truce with Turkey, but the Treaty of London had secured Greek independence.
The statue of George Canning from 1834 has a simple inscription: ‘George Canning 1770-1827’.
It was unveiled, wrapped in British and Greek flags, by the Greek Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, on 6 April 1931, at a ceremony attended by Sir Patrick Ramsay, the British ambassador, and the English builder and developer Charles Boot (1874-1945), who donated the statue to the Greek nation.
And here are the Sheffield connections.
Charles Boot was the Sheffield-born son of Henry Boot, the builder, and became a successful businessman and creator of Pinewood Studios.
He acquired the 10ft-high statue when he bought Thornbridge Hall, Great Longstone, near Bakewell, in 1929.
The statue, the work of famous Jordanthorpe-born sculptor, Sir Francis Chantrey (1781-1841), had originally been at Trentham Hall, Staffordshire, the last work commissioned by the Duke of Sutherland.
It was transferred to Thornbridge Hall, and after the death of the Liberal statesman, Chantrey made a replica which was erected at Westminster Abbey.
As a result of big business dealings between his firm, Henry Boot and Sons, with the Greek Government, it occurred to Charles Boot to present the statue to the Greek nation, and has remained here ever since.
Sadly, if you think that Sheffield has a graffiti problem, then I suggest you look at Athens.
I don’t know about you, but I never look in shop windows anymore. Frankly, there’s not much to look at, with only a handful of department stores making the effort, if at all.
We must thank Harry Gordon Selfridge for being one of the first to create window dressing displays to attract customers.
The American millionaire’s aim was to “make an art of window display” and resulted in copycat spectacles across Britain.
Nowadays, the skill of window dressing has been replaced with visual digital technology, and this hasn’t exactly helped our struggling shops.
The Moor at night can be a particularly gloomy place when shops have closed, and despite the best efforts of ‘arty’ street lighting, its attempts to attract a night-time audience are pretty much nil.
It makes this newspaper article from March 1931 about “the attractive thoroughfare” even more interesting.
“On leaving cinemas and theatres in the centre of the city last night, hundreds of people were attracted to the Moor, by the special lighting display arranged in connection with the ‘Display Week’.
“They discovered undreamed beauty at Moorhead. The Crimea monument has not been regarded with admiration by many modern citizens, but under the floodlighting this week it takes on special graces.
“The whole result is a credit to those who have contributed to the scheme, to the Electric Supply Department of the Sheffield Corporation, the Edison Swan Electric Company, and the proprietors of the various businesses on the Moor.
“Standing at Moorhead one has an uninterrupted view of the straight thoroughfare down a slight gradient, and the effect of the special lighting is most striking.
“After ordinary business hours the shops are keeping their well-dressed windows lighted. During the whole of last evening the Moor was thronged with citizens attracted by the more than usually bright appearance of the various establishments.
“Although the shops were closed and the interior premises were in darkness, the brilliant windows in which the best efforts of a peculiarly modern art were displayed, attracted many appreciative visitors.
“Until 10 o’clock the whole of the Moor was a blaze of light, and provided ample proof of the efficiency of the arrangements, as well as the business acumen of tenants and proprietors of premises along the thoroughfare which is regarded by many as the most attractive business centre in the city.”
Today, the Moor Management team can only dream at such high visitor numbers after-dark, but we should remember that this was the major road linking Pinstone Street with Ecclesall Road, and with a plentiful supply of cars, buses and trams going up and down.
And while we’re at it, the Crimea monument, seemingly lost for years by Sheffield City Council, before being found again, once earmarked for the Botanical Gardens, is still languishing in some dark corner.
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