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Old Coroner's Court to be demolished


Gamal

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As of a great song "Another one Bites the Dust". When they have got rid of all the old buildings what will they sell off next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I can’t see the logic in this they go to great pains and cost to keep
 Park Hill Flats that hardly anyone in Sheffield wanted to keep and still a large part of it looks like it’s about to fall down and a building with historical interest is allowed to be demolished to build yet more boxy apartments. I thought the council were supposed to be making the history of the Castlegate  a Big part of the new leisure area. This is a lovely building and matches into other buildings at Castlegate it should be saved. 

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Thearticle makes it quite clear that it is the Inspector and not the Council who has approved the scheme. SCC has fought ,long and hard, to tetain the building.

At least on this occasion our Council cannot be accused of being "Philistines" as happened too often in the past!😷

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. The Council, as I understand matters, has reached the limit of what can reasonably be done to keep the building. Originally the Council turned down the application but the developers appealed against SCC's decision (  all litigation costs £££ and this appeal cost  the Council taxpayers ££££s.) In the end the Inspector agreed with the developer. . Its an early 20th century building , I wonder, does it really have any merit excepting its age?

 

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I started my career here. I was sent on work experience as a school kid to a startup computer firm. They were making an urdu word processor, quite revolutionary for the time. I remember my teachers having great fun telling me I was going to be working in a former morgue, one teacher even claimed there were still bodies in fridges there that had been forgotten about.

The building was then owned by the council and they were running it as "Enterprise Workshops" for startups. This would be about 1988:

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As well as our tiny computer firm, there were quite a few heavier industries running in there, I remember MASSIVE lathes and things laid out across the middle of the building that I had to pick my way through each morning on my way to our corner room.

Anyway, 20 years on and I thought it would be fun to rent the same room there for my own fledgling business. For most of those 20 years it had laid abandoned and derelict by the council. But it was now owned by a private entrepreneur who had bought it at auction (you'd think for a pound and a packet of Bensons but I think he'd paid a crippling amount for it). It was now operating as "Old Coroner's Court Business Centre". When he bought it, it was nearly falling to the ground. The area where the lathes had been a couple of decades before now proudly boasted a tree which had taken root beneath the floorboards.

He did a LOT of work and spent a ton of cash turning the building into a reasonable working space.  Here's a picture from an estate agent, I think this was taken roughly where the lathes and then the tree had once been - he did a good job:

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But the building was still pretty much falling down. And a target for arsonists, an old workshop to the rear which happened to be lumped into the estate for some reason was burnt down one night, while I was working an all nighter next door. And then the floods...packing up each night I would be careful to make sure all our PCs were above potential flood level and at least once had to evacuate due to flood warnings. Ugh.

I enjoyed working there again, despite the regular power blackouts.  But it was a lot for the owner to manage, and some time after 2013 he gave up and I think sold up to the developers.

I've a lot of sentiment for the building but come on. It was and is a dump, falling to the ground and until the redevelopment was announced, not many people seemed to care about it. Of course there were campaigners, but I'll wager not a single one of them would actually part with cash OR time OR a packet of Benson's to restore the place. And it would take millions. I agree with the last poster, it had very little merit and it's long been an eyesore.

 

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