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The blue 'police box' next to the town hall


Sheffield History

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On 12/02/2007 at 01:49, Guest james said:

Someone once told me (don't know how true it was) that it was placed there during the miners strike so Police could be permenantly stationed where the strike was?

How wrong can you be?  The police boxes of Sheffield were built and put to use over a number of years in the first half of the last century. (From 1928 onwards)  It's a great shame they have all disappeared except (I think) this one.  Even the modern substitutes such as that built in 1963 on Infirmary Road or the quite large "section station" at Parkhill Flats have been sold off.   I was in the Force on the cusp of that modernisation and it was a huge relief to be on one of those beats. The new "boxes" had heating and a small stove as well as a proper table and chairs. The old boxes had a bench, a stool and a small almost useless coil-stove   (that's Coil as in electrical heating not as in coal-stove !) . You put your mashing can on those stoves at about midnight and if you were lucky the water would be hot enough to make tea about 2.30am. If you were soaked with rain or snow you stayed wet and cold! But you were only allowed to be in the box for four minutes each hour, or for 45 minutes for meal break...or when writing reports or dealing with a prisoner. Fearsome beat sergeants would be in wait if you lingered long!  I have an essay, "The Beat Book" about bring a Probationer PC in Sheffield in 1961, which has been lodged with the Forum Administrator. Or it can be read by signing in to the British Police History website. 

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Thank you so much for this information I remember as a child my Mum making my Dad's mash can up, it had loose tea, sugar and condensed milk in it. I shall locate The Beat Book and read it with great interest. Thank you once again

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I have a key somewhere for the Town Hall police box, I must pop in a take a photo of the inside one day. Last time I was in there it had ben filled with all sorts of junk, banners and road signs etc.

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I did my best to fill it when I was on afternoon shifts and night shifts between 1961 and 1964.....Several beats had Town Hall Box on their routes and some Saturday nights there was a queue of bobbies and their prisoners outside waiting for the Black Maria. I transferred to a place on the South Coast where weekends were just as exciting but the troublemakers were all sailors!  The Naval Patrols sorted them out with big heavy truncheons. 

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My grandfather Norman Waterfall Clayton would have used this police box. He joined the police straight after WW2 in 1946, he initially had to join Derbyshire Police as you couldn't join the force you lived in back then. He later moved to Rotherham Police and then to Sheffield.

He used to tell me as a kid that on night shifts on foot beat he had to check the doors of all the shops and business on his beat. They would tap the kerb with their truncheon to signal to the cop on the nearby beat to check if they were OK, if they got a tap back they knew they were. He would have to get to a police box by a certain time to receive a phone call from his Sgt/Insp to check he was there on time and needed to provide a suitable reason for not being on time. Sometimes his Sgt would be driven  by another PC to meet the beat cops to check on them.

As an Inspector he did the prosecutions in the old court room on Waingate/Castle St, back in the time when police did this and not the CPS. He was also a gaffer at the old Attercliffe nik (not the current new one) before retiring in 1976 as a Chief Supt.

He did his full 30yrs without taking a single day off sick, and had an article in the Sheffield Star about this, with magistrates thanking him for his service as a prosecutor. I have that newspaper cutting, along with some photos that a newspaper reporter took of him when they followed him on the beat one day for an article they wrote on him as a day in the live of a beat cop.

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Convent of the Sisters of Charity, St. Vincents House, Broad Lane and Police Box on the corner of Red Hill (on right)  September 1938.u00840.jpg.c1a24f2235b49010eeb983fbb3b22c7e.jpgu00840

Photographer: City Engineers Department. 

 

Police Box, Nursery Street, No 30, Chadburns' Lenses Ltd, Opticians (Albion Works), Coroner's Court and Public Mortuary, right.

https://www.picturesheffield.com/frontend.php?keywords=Ref_No_increment;EQUALS;v00926&pos=68&action=zoom&id=42718

No date with the photograph. 

 

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I'm reading The Beat Book written by a member on here Fentonvillain and he mentions that the boxes were green and yellow...

 

In B division there were 36 beats. Each beat was allocated a page. The top of the page outlined, street by street, the beat boundary. Below this was information giving the beat boxes, the police boxes on the beat – one of which was the main beat box where the beat would be based – and then below that would be the eight 'points' listed as A, B, C etc and alongside each initial was a location usually described as a junction between two streets. In those days there were many beat boxes, those old fashioned green and yellow painted wooden police boxes and each had an individual name like "Lansdowne", "Bow", "Bridgehouses".

 

 

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25 minutes ago, Ponytail said:

Police Box, Nursery Street, No 30, Chadburns' Lenses Ltd, Opticians (Albion Works), Coroner's Court and Public Mortuary, right.

https://www.picturesheffield.com/frontend.php?keywords=Ref_No_increment;EQUALS;v00926&pos=68&action=zoom&id=42718

No date with the photograph. 

 

^^That box would have been nest to where the grey Mercedes is parked in this current day Google Street view image.

Looks like the neighbouring buildings were demolished and a single storey extension to the coroners court built

 

Screenshot2023-12-20at21_53_46.thumb.png.488713e3abd8ae8f67d78a4942d73323.png

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Police Box near the junction of Norwood Avenue and Herries Road showing the junction with Longley Lane. 10th November 1960.s17156.jpg.2bf368114381e1942036fb2df01bb1b4.jpgs17156

Photographer: City Engineers Department. 

 

Police Box, Hatfield House Lane at the junction with Barnsley Road. 20th July 1955.s17161.jpg.ccf51e443956c319da710189289a27f9.jpgs17161

Photographer: City Engineers Department. 

 

Police Box, Firth Park Roundabout, January 1949.

https://www.picturesheffield.com/frontend.php?keywords=Ref_No_increment;EQUALS;s15827&pos=39&action=zoom&id=18660

 

 

 

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Meadowhead looking towards junction with Greenhill Main Road, Police Box right. 26th August 1966.s17884.jpg.549e2b42ab4fa5b3d3c0b801823679c8.jpgs17884

Photographer: City Engineers Department. 

 

Norton Lees Lane, at junction with Derbyshire Lane, prior to removal of Police Box and (left) Nos. 9-11, Frank Clover and Sons Ltd., builders. 25th March 1954.s18416.jpg.5112bc2eb0a22cff8b591e6b177b52f2.jpgs18416

 

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Police Box, Ecclesall Road South and Abbey Lane junction. 23rd January 1958.s15179.jpg.99c16b8d6da579fc8bf2ae8f76bd33b1.jpgs15179

Photographer: City Engineers Department. 

 

Nos. 2, 4, 6, Richmond Road, Handsworth (demolished 1960) and Police Box, Handsworth Road. 21st August 1958.

t00468.jpg.cf2188901a461762329a2e2ac81192c1.jpgt00468

Photographer: Llewelyn Roberts, Medical Officer of Health. 

 

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The police box in Surrey street was installed during August 1928. A 1932 article in the Telegraph refers to three telephone boxes "which adorn the pavement outside the Town Hall" , so I'd suggest that the police box was originally in a different location to the one we all recall (or the date on the photo doesn't refer to the date it was taken).  The OS map revised in 1935 shows the P.C.B. (police call box) in its final position, with the three T.C.B.s (telephone call boxes) spread out along the causey edge.

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I found this photo on Picture Sheffield showing the police box in its current location and a newer model of telephone box on the Surrey Street pavement.

The film showing at the cinema on Barker's Pool was Masquerade in Vienna, released in 1934.



image.png.a82603c75bb9521b0817ff3d1fd5756c.png

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