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Summary of Dominant Character

Figure 1: Telephone House, built in 1972 above a brutalist inspired car park is typical of the architecture originally built around the 20th century urban dual carriageways of this zone.

© 2007 SYAS

The Character Areas making up this zone generally underwent fundamental character change in the period 1945-1977. The dominant theme of change was urban renewal, with areas generally cleared wholesale of earlier buildings and features, and street patterns reconfigured. These clearance projects are generally contemporary with those that produced the ‘Late 20th Century Municipal Suburbs’ zone – indeed this zone includes the sites of the high density inner city housing projects (all built on cleared terraced housing sites) of Hanover, Lansdowne, Netherthorpe, as well as the redeveloped site of the Broomhall Flats. The zone also has architectural affinities with parts of the Historic Core Zone, where post war urban renewal replaced large areas of buildings, whist leaving street patterns intact, such as around High Street and West Bar/ West Bar Green.

Figure 2: ‘The 20th Century Replanned Centre’ of Sheffield is defined as the area of the city centre subject to major clearance and redevelopment programmes connected to the realignment of the city’s road system, higher educational institutions and central housing schemes in the mid to late 20th century.

© Crown copyright. All rights reserved. Sheffield City Council 100018816. 2007

The components of this zone are linked by a system of roads, designed as urban dual carriageways (although some have now had central reservations removed), which pedestrians were generally discouraged to cross at surface level. To facilitate crossing, a large number of pedestrian bridges and subways were built, especially at roundabouts. Many of the structures constructed during this period were designed to be uncompromisingly modern in appearance, with much influence of the Brutalist school of architecture evident (Harman and Minnis 2004, 209).

The title of this Character Zone acknowledges the importance of the proposals published by the City Council Town Planning Committee at the end of World War II (SCC 1945). This document, entitled Sheffield Replanned, presented the findings of an investigation by the City Engineer’s department into reconstruction possibilities following the devastating raids on the city in December 1940. The proposals were far reaching - the changes to the road network were outlined in a 50-year schedule (ibid, 73-74). The specifics of developments that resulted from this document often differed from the initial proposals, however, the document laid out many principles that formed dominant themes in development of the city centre until the present day. The land-use zoning within the document (see figure 4) laid out the basic land-use pattern of the city centre that would remain until the early twenty first century. The document also proposed both the present day dual carriageway inner ring road and a civic circle (only partly built). The civic circle was to be reinvented in the later 1960s with the construction of a complete loop comprising Eyre Street, Furnival Gate, Charter Row and Furnival Gate. The segregation of pedestrians and traffic, that would became so characteristic of this zone, was envisioned with plans for multi storey car parks, barriers along central reservations working in concert with road crossing provided at approved points and in “subway crossings (perhaps improved by the installation of escalators) at the more important traffic roundabouts...” (ibid, 46).

Figure 3: A surviving subway crossing under Charter Square

© 2006 SYAS

Other proposals of Sheffield Replanned that influenced much of the dramatic replanning of this zone included plans for; a Town Hall Extension; a Bus Station in its present location (replacing a tram system seen as incompatible with the new ‘gyratory’ system); a Technical College overlooking the bus station (now the Hallam University City Campus); a combined and centralised theatre and cinema area; the pedestrianisation of the central area;the removal of heavy industry from the ‘Ponds’ character area; and the removal of existing housing from the centre. The influence of the document would also be felt outside this zone – the document foresaw the redevelopment of the High Street and Castle Character area, although this development was eventually accommodated mostly within the historic street pattern.

Figure 4: Extract from ‘Sheffield Replanned’ (SCC, 1945)

© SYAS

Outside the direct sphere of influence of the city council’s road and housing schemes, but intimately linked with them, are significant developments by the University of Sheffield, the NHS and Sheffield Hallam University and its predecessors. The City Campus of the Hallam University has already been mentioned and has its origins in the Technical College proposed in Sheffield Replanned. Originally built by Sheffield City Council as part of its obligation under the 1944 Education Act the earliest surviving parts are the Owen, Surrey and Norfolk Buildings built from 1953-1968 (Harman and Minnis, 2004, 89).

Figure 5: Sheffield University’s ‘Arts Tower’

© 2005 David Gill. Licensed for reuse under a creative commons license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

The University of Sheffield was originally established around the former Technical School in ‘Mappin Street’ Character Area but soon expanded westwards after the acquisition of land and the construction of Firth Court at Western Bank in 1902-1909. Significant expansion of these early buildings (involving the re-planning of historic urban forms) occurred in the same period as the rest of this zone. The Western Bank site is dominated by the Library and 21 storey Arts Tower (1955-1965) designed as complementary linked buildings. The rest of the buildings are united by the ‘Concourse’, a pedestrian space designed to bring the earlier buildings together despite the presence of a main road bisecting the site. This division was complicated in the mid-late 1960s by the upgrading of the road to dual carriageways as a main feeder into the Inner Ring Road – a challenge met by construction of a concrete flyover carrying the road overhead. Other buildings on the site are of a variety of twentieth century styles, often rising to 5 or more storeys.

To the west of the University lies a significant and large complex of NHS hospitals. Although the oldest phase of the Children’s Hospital dates to 1902, it was massively expanded from the late 1960s onwards in modern style. Three major hospitals, all now affiliated to the University School of Medicine as teaching establishments, now occupy the western extent of the Character Area, later expansions of these establishments having infilled much of the earlier landscape between them. The most characteristic building within this zone is the massively built concrete Royal Hallamshire Hospital.

Inherited Character

The defining characteristic of this zone is the extent to which earlier urban environments have been re-written. This means that the different landscapes and street patterns that existed in this zone prior to replanning leave few legible remains.

Figure 6: Construction work on Arundel Gate 1967

© SCC

A significant feature of the replanning of the centre of Sheffield was the construction of the Hole in the Road in the late 1960s. This was dug deeply into the bedrock within the historic core of the old town at High Street and is found at the head of the ‘Civic Circle’ Character Area. The zone continues south west along Arundel Gate and Eyre Street. Here it cuts through an area historically divided into grid patterns of mixed light industry and housing that had grown up around the historic core in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Surviving examples of this development are found in the ‘Urban Industrial’ Zone.

The 18th and 19th century grid pattern developed after the 1788 enclosure of the former Little Sheffield Moor. Within the modern shopping centre, the central axis of The Moor is now the only legible trace of this triangular common; the central street fossilising South Street, which was laid out by the Ecclesall Enclosure Award as a 60 foot enclosure road down the centre of the common. Either side of this central artery, the surveyor William Fairbank planned a regular division of the land into square building plots, in the fashion of the building lease system of the late 18th century that formed the basis of the 18th-19th century industrial suburbs of the city.

Post-war the triangular pattern of the earlier moor was lost in favour of a rectangle, and was eventually bounded and sealed by the Civic Circle and its subways in the late 1960s. Further areas of 18th-19th century industrial grid development were lost to the east of the city centre with the redevelopment of the theatre and cinema complex (originally known as the Epic development (Harman and Minnis 2004, 152) and featuring, large windowless blocks, massive car parks, and extensive networks of internal public rights of way directed through subways, deck style walkways and escalators) as well as to provide land for the Town Hall Extension, originally proposed in Sheffield Replanned for the present Peace Gardens but eventually constructed further to the east in the late 1970s (FIGURE).

The ‘Ponds’ character area, is within the historic valley floor area that is formed by the combined alluvial plains of the rivers Sheaf and Porter. Historically this area was probably low lying meadow land. Mill sites are known from the medieval period and some haphazard industrial suburbanisation appears to have already begun by 1736 (see Gosling plan). The area has been comprehensively redeveloped in the late 20th century, the Bus Station has been sited here since the 1950s although the recommendation in Sheffield Replanned that heavy industry be completely removed from this area was not fully implemented until the demolition of the remains of the former ‘Pond’s Forge’ and other surrounding steel worksin advance of the 1991 World Student Games. The only legible features older than the Bus Station and Ponds Forge International Sports Centre are the timber framed sections of the ‘Old Queens Head’, originally part of medieval elite property; and from the late 19th century, the Midland Station and the gate posts from the original Ponds Forge.

The ‘Lansdowne, Hanover, Netherthorpe and Inner Ring Road’ Character Area dates principally to the 1960s and 1970s and includes the sites of three surviving and one demolished inner city municipal housing project. The housing estates were all built to replace condemned mid 19th century working class housing and were generally made available for these developments by contemporary slum clearances. As a rule none of these estates fossilised earlier street patterns and the forms of housing introduced represented radical changes in patterns of urban living, although as at Lansdowne the deck access system and continuation of earlier street names continues the attempts at replicating some of the character of street life begun at Park Hill. The estates are all adjacent to parts of the Inner Relief Road, which although generally built along the routes of earlier roads, often involved the demolition of at least one street. The route of the road caused the severance of parts of the industrial districts to the south of the city centre, as well as of the 18th-19th century suburb of Broomspring (originally a continuous part of Broomhall) and of the two central sites of the University of Sheffield.

Figure 7: Demolition of Aberdeen Street in Broomhall in advance of the construction of the inner ring road and Hanover Estate in 1964 – note the half built University Arts Tower in the background

© SCC

The more piecemeal development of the University and hospitals within the ‘Western Bank’ and ‘St George’s’ Character Areas preserves the most obvious legibility within this area of earlier development. Expansion of the University in the St George’s area since the 1990s has been considerable, but whilst the buildings adopt post modern styling, much of the older street patterning, established by the late 18th century and developed along grid-iron lines, is retained. Amongst the newer buildings are some important 19th century houses, churches, industrial buildings and the neo-gothic former Jessop’s Hospital for Women. At Western Bank, as has been noted above, clearance and demolition have left little historic fabric in what was formerly one of the oldest parts of the suburbs of Broomhall and Crookes. The oldest building phases of the Children’s Hospital and University, however, predate the most characteristic period (1945-1980) of this zone.

Later Characteristics

This zone has been described so far in terms of the landscape created by large-scale urban renewal and road projects undertaken in the period from 1945-1977, a time period which saw the development of the characteristic developments of this zone. The development and investment that characterised this period began to dwindle in the 1970s and by the early 1980s Sheffield’s traditional industries of both heavy steel and light tool production were in serious and near terminal recession (Hey 1997, 238-244). The loss of Council revenue from business taxes as the industrial base of the city collapsed, combined with falls in central government grants, (ibid, 245) meant that little spare cash was available for the maintenance of newly created municipal assets of this zone. The Brutalist aesthetic, so promoted by successive city architects and engineers, began to become a symbol of the decline of the city and country at large. This period saw the rise of a new role for architecture and urban design, often characterised as ‘regeneration’. Early signs of this process within this zone are the Moorfoot building created in 1978, for the former Manpower Services Commission (Harman and Minnis 2004, 100) as part of a government drive to relocate parts of the civil service to the regions.

The mid 1990s saw the genesis of the Heart of the City project with ambitious plans drawn up to reconfigure the city. These were centred around the demolition of the Town Hall Extension and Registry Office, freeing up a large council owned site for mixed commercial and public development. The ambitious plans, which included an explicit aim of the “removal of severance” (Topwood 1999, 78) caused by Arundel Gate, featured a mix of innovative public open spaces (including the Winter and Millenium Galleries incorporating covered public rights of way) and sites for commercial development (such as the St Pauls Macdonald Hotel). The segregation of pedestrians and vehicles has been downgraded, with the re-introduction of surface crossings to Arundel Gate, Eyre Street, Furnival Gate and Rockingham Gate and the removal of pedestrian bridges around the Moor. Along Arundel Gate, the extensive subway system has been closed and filled, most notably at the Castle Square Hole in the Road and at Furnival Square where a monumental grade separated underpass formerly dominated the townscape. In 2007 developments are continuing within the St Georges and Western Bank areas as the University continues to expand.

Figure 8: The early 21st century saw the demolition of the 1970s ‘Town Hall Extension’ popularly known as ‘The Egg Box’.

© SYAS 2001

Areas within this Zone

• ‘Civic Circle’
• ‘Lansdowne, Hanover, Netherthorpe and Inner Ring Road’
• ‘Ponds’
• ‘Western Bank’
• ‘St Georges’

Bibliography

SCC (Sheffield City Council)

1945 Sheffield Replanned: A Report, with plates, diagrams and illustrations, setting out the problems in re-planning the city and the proposals of the Sheffield Town Planning Committee. Sheffield: Sheffield City Council.

Harman, R. and Minnis, J.

2004 Sheffield: Pevsner Architectural Guide. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Hey, D.

1997 A History of Sheffield. Lancaster: Carnegie Publishing Ltd.

Topwood, A.

1999 The Heart of the City. Private Finance Initiative Journal, Vol 4, Issue 4, 78-79.