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What a building! Does anyone know the history of this place?


Sheffield History

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22382899442_3f71a79bb3_b.jpg

Surely one of the most overlooked buildings in Sheffield but absolutely glorious looking -does anyone know what this building on Carver Street was built for or used as?

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Their trade mark is above the door, also the name of the building,  Alpha House. There is a bit about them here            ---------------------               http://www.strazors.com/index.php?id=612&doc=harrison_brothers_and_howson_sheffield_                          ------------------------                         Image (c) Google Earth.  

alpha_house.png

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1 hour ago, boginspro said:

Their trade mark is above the door, also the name of the building,  Alpha House. There is a bit about them here            ---------------------               http://www.strazors.com/index.php?id=612&doc=harrison_brothers_and_howson_sheffield_                          ------------------------                         Image (c) Google Earth.  

alpha_house.png

 


oooooh you're good!

I like your style!

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You've touched on one of the buildings with an amazing modern history here!!!

In more recent years this building was the home of Gremlin Graphics/Gremlin interactive (later Infogrames Sheffield), where they made classic games like Monty Mole, Zool, Motorhead, Fatal Racing, Actua Soccer, the official Euro 96 game, the Premier Manager series of games and loads, loads more.

In fact, Gremlin bought DMA design in Scotland - the people who made Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings - before eventually being bought out by Infogrames (who also bought Atari). They moved from the offices above in the picture to a now demolished building near Devonshire Green that was to be named 'Atari Sheffield House' before they pulled the plug on that. After it was closed down the founders of Gremlin Graphics went on to found some other tech companies including Zoo Digital, Sumo Digital and more - some of which work on top-tier games right here in Sheffield nowadays (although more in a contractor sense than full developer for themselves), and Sumo are one of the leaders in emerging Virtual Reality development currently.

Gremlin came from the owners of the small Just Micro computer shop that was located here too.

I believe the offices are now a call centre.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gremlin_Interactive

Some more info:

And a history (some old footage of/in the building briefly shown):

 

 

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In the 60s the upper floors were let out to various businesses, - my girlfriend worked there for a car finance company.

Along the corridor was the Sheffield Credit Reference Agency (??) which looked quite Dickensian. It was stacked high with old fashioned card index records, one for each person in Sheffield.  They would scan the newspapers for court reports and suchlike noting down any convictions for fraud and bad debts.  Large organisations such as the gas board would also submit details of people who didn't pay their bills.

This information was then sold to any business who wanted to check your credit rating, just like modern computer systems.

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I wonder what happened to all those cards.  It would be a major GDPR headache today, but in due course would be a fascinating social history resource.

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