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The Great Sheffield Gale, 1962


Guest tsavo

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Could this be in the lead story on the copy of the Star in post #13 above?

It's too small to read and there was more than one fatality that night but the headline describes this incident well.

It might well be, but as you say it is too small to read. It was just around the

corner from where I lived at the time.

The house was on the top right hand side of this road where now stands an old folks home.

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It might well be, but as you say it is too small to read. It was just around the

corner from where I lived at the time.

The house was on the top right hand side of this road where now stands an old folks home.

Ellison Street.

This is an area I have very poor childhood memories of as we moved out when I was about 3 under slum clearance in the late 1950's

We lived in a court on Wentworth street until 1958

My grandad lived on Daisy Walk until 1959

My uncle and his family lived on St. Phillips Road, on the section who's back yards looked out across to Ellison Street, until 1974.

So this was quite an interesting picture to look at ukelele lady as its a part of town which forms part of my dim and distant past and I never go down there much these days.

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The white building on the corner use to be Gebhards provisions, known for their pork sandwichs in the early 60s.

There's an old picture on Sheffield Libraries at the same angle as this. Are we allowed to use those for a Then

and Now?

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It's weird for me because I was too young to remember the gale, but in my minds eye I can see the Maisonettes opposite our house without a roof.

It blew off almost in one piece. My Auntie had the chimmney fall through the roof into the bathroom, and our house suffered very little damage, just a broken porch. I suppose it must be the fact that it was talked about when I was a child that makes it seem like I remember it.

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It's weird for me because I was too young to remember the gale, but in my minds eye I can see the Maisonettes opposite our house without a roof.

It blew off almost in one piece. My Auntie had the chimmney fall through the roof into the bathroom, and our house suffered very little damage, just a broken porch. I suppose it must be the fact that it was talked about when I was a child that makes it seem like I remember it.

Welcome to Sheffield History sol.

As the gale was City wide and caused extensive damage throughout where abouts exactly was this? My memories are of the Arbourthorne estate and ukelele ladies are of the St. Phillips road area and if you read the earlier posts there are memories of it hitting other areas as well so it would be nice to know where the maisonettes / your auntie were so as to get an overall picture of the damage in the City

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Who's Laurence??? :blink:

Sorry for the confusion, UKL, was trying personalise the post, to soften the blow. It would be great if we could post from PS directly, but they refuse permission as many of the photo''s they have on offer are not owned by them and the copyright is with the owners of the pics.

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Sorry for the confusion, UKL, was trying personalise the post, to soften the blow. It would be great if we could post from PS directly, but they refuse permission as many of the photo''s they have on offer are not owned by them and the copyright is with the owners of the pics.

They also try to sell you the pictures as 10" x 8" prints for around £8 a print.

Very expensive if you want the full set (they have thousands of pictures!) but nice if you wanted one particular picture for a special reason.

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They also try to sell you the pictures as 10" x 8" prints for around £8 a print.

Very expensive if you want the full set (they have thousands of pictures!) but nice if you wanted one particular picture for a special reason.

I came across a photo of my dad taken in 1940. After puchasing one I had it framed for my mum, the look on her face when she saw it was priceless.

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The white building on the corner use to be Gebhards provisions, known for their pork sandwichs in the early 60s.

There's an old picture on Sheffield Libraries at the same angle as this. Are we allowed to use those for a Then

and Now?

Did it not first open as a Fine Fare ? I know that from the early 70`s it was Rapid Brake Services, then I think Butlers Motor Factors for a while.

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Did it not first open as a Fine Fare ? I know that from the early 70`s it was Rapid Brake Services, then I think Butlers Motor Factors for a while.

No it opened as Gebhards, some German chap but I do remember it turning into a small super market years later.

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They also try to sell you the pictures as 10" x 8" prints for around £8 a print.

Very expensive if you want the full set (they have thousands of pictures!) but nice if you wanted one particular picture for a special reason.

I've ordered a few pictures in the past from the City Library in fact I've been this morning and ordered two more.

mine are 6x8 and cost £3-50. I believe you pay more ordering on line.

Which brings use back to the copy right. If I've got pictures all bought and paid for, then surely I can post them

on this site.

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No it opened as Gebhards, some German chap but I do remember it turning into a small super market years later.

I've just remembered Gebhards turned into a Spar supermarket but I don't think it lasted long because a

Fine Fair opened at Upperthorpe.

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My aunt lived at the top of King James Street, and was woken up by the sound of slates crashing. She got my uncle up and they went downstairs to see what was happening. A few minutes later the chimney stack came down and landed on the bed. The weight of brick and slate was such that the iron frame was bent. If they hadn't got up when they did they would both have been killed

We got up the next morning to find the chicken hut had blown away and the chickens were all roosting in the trees in next doors garden

Chris

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Guest bus man

There is an official STD (Sheffield Transport Photo) of the canteen at Greenland Road garage with all the tables removed and replaced by beds ready for the evacuees - I dont think it was actually used as they didnt need the space , but think they used the canteen to prep food for use else where

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I've ordered a few pictures in the past from the City Library in fact I've been this morning and ordered two more.

mine are 6x8 and cost £3-50. I believe you pay more ordering on line.

Which brings use back to the copy right. If I've got pictures all bought and paid for, then surely I can post them

on this site.

Don't think copyright works quite like that ukelele lady. You can buy books, photographs, recorded music and films. That gives you your own copy for PERSONAL (i.e. private and limited) use but it does not give you the RIGHTS to the text / image / music / film (the INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY) so even though you have bought the print the rights to it still belong to someone else.

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There is an official STD (Sheffield Transport Photo) of the canteen at Greenland Road garage with all the tables removed and replaced by beds ready for the evacuees - I dont think it was actually used as they didnt need the space , but think they used the canteen to prep food for use else where

This sounds a bit like the set up in post #12, second picture down on the left "safety in the school" which shows a similar set up in a school hall. I know both our local schools on the Arbourthorne, Norfolk school, (at the time called Arbourthorne North secondary school) and Hurlfield were used in this way for homeless refugees from destroyed prefabs and to offer a place with some safety until the storm ended.

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Taken in 1959 this is the oldest personal photo I have posted.

Taken in the back garden of our prefab in Algar Place it is a picture of my aunties pet dog, a toy poodle.

Apparently poodles were the dog to have in 1959, - the Parisian influence, but you hardly ever see them these days.

More importantly behind the dog is a row of prefabs on Algar Drive, each showing that "Anderson shelter" looking coal bunker in the back garden.

Here the prefabs are in good condition but every single one of these houses was destroyed in the 1962 gale 3 years later.

That wire mesh fence behind the dog, our garden fence, actually saved our house from a similar fate.

The wind lifted the pitch & tar flat roof off the prefab to the right of the dog, blew it across the space between the houses (actually an extension of Arbourthorne Playing Fields) and smashed it into the fence.

The fence was flattened but it brought the roof to rest in our back garden about 6 feet short of hitting our house, had the fence not been there it would have smashed straight into my bedroom.

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Another 1959 picture.

Me and my mum at the front bedroom window.

Note the asbestos structure, the flat roof, the single storey bungalow (yes I did say bedroom window)

Note the vertically polarised VHF BAND III dipole with directors on the roof, - great for receiving ITV in 405 line black & white from Emley Moor and BBC from Holme Moss, - the only 2 channels available at the time.

In the gale I think the loss of that aeriel was our only damage and it was soon put back up.

Stuart0742 may like to note that the prefab behind and to the right of ours (under that slight blemish in the photo) on Algar Drive is where Frithy lived from 1963 to 1965. Being at the bottom of Algar Drive (just as ours was at the bottom of Algar Place) protected it from the full force of the wind and so these houses survived intact until clearance of the area in 1966.

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Guest stradlad

My first posting on here. I joined a long while ago but was never able to log in on my Mac. Yeah. I now have a PC laptop and am finally in. I'm writing about my childhood growing up in Sheffield so I'm naturally interested in this forum.

Friday 16 Feb 1962. The great sheffield gale. It hit in the early morning hours of the 16th. I was living on the Stradbroke estate and to be honest, I don't remember seeing much devastation until the double decker that I was on entered the Woodthorpe estate. At ther junction of Prince of Wales Rd (I don't remember whether that particular section of the street was desuignated Woodthorpe or Manor). There was a house with the entire side of the upstairs missing. Bedroom completely exposed. Don't remember where the bed was. From there on into the older parts of the city...Wybourn and Park districts, it got progressively worse. Roofing slates, broken glass and masonry all over the place. I have 2 questions of detail:

* According to what I've gleaned, the gale erupted around 4:30 a.m. and peaked 6 a.m. When did it end? I'm thinking by 8 a.m. it must have subsided or I wouldn't have been on the upstairs of that double decker bus.

*Anyone any idea how long after that storm the rainy weather started? I know it did because I remember my grandfather going up and downstairs from the attic of his home in the Park district as the rain pored in through the roof where the slates had been blown off.

Thanks

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My first posting on here. I joined a long while ago but was never able to log in on my Mac. Yeah. I now have a PC laptop and am finally in. I'm writing about my childhood growing up in Sheffield so I'm naturally interested in this forum.

...

Thanks

Up on the Arbourthorne I seem to remember it remained windy all day. By 8 o'clock the police were coming round in cars, house by house, evacuating residents and the recently homeless and taking them to places of safety, - relatives who could put them up, school halls, anywhere out of the wind, cold and danger of collapsing buildings.

I was evacuated to my aunties with my mum and young baby brother for 2 days. We weren't far away from home, just at the top of Northern Avenue opposite Hurlfield school which was also being used as a refuge, but at least we were in a secure brick built house rather than an asbestos sheet prefab.

As our prefab was not damaged the police allowed my dad to stay at home without being evacuated to make sure the property was secure, to keep a neighbourly eye out for strangers (the police feared a speight of "looting" once the wind subsided due to the large number of household and personal possessions which had been scattered across the estate by the wind) and to help with clearing up, collecting and handing in valuables and generally giving a helping hand in this time of need.

I seem to remember that the rest of February and most of January were very wet, - so wet that it was April before it was warm and dry enough for us kids to want to go out exploring the wrecks. I am sure that because of this wet period one of my childhood memories of this event which has persisted to this day is the smell of the old wrecks. That peculiar smell od damp decaying wallpaper, wood and plaster. The asbestos sheets, when wet, also had a certain odour to them of dampness. In the summer months that smell was replaced by ones of burning wood, paint, pitch tar and paper when the works department dismantled the wrecks and ceremoniously burnt them in their own back garden.

As I have probably said previously they also "burnt" the asbestos wall panels. Asbestos doesn't burn, it just crumbles to a fine white powder, - and as we all know know (but they didn't in 1962) if inhaled, as much of it must have been this powder is a carcinogenic killer (asbestosis). So far the health of my lungs is holding out well even after all these years and I have never smoked cigarettes but this asbestos incident is a concern that I have to live with.

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Guest stradlad

Up on the Arbourthorne I seem to remember it remained windy all day. By 8 o'clock the police were coming round in cars, house by house, evacuating residents and the recently homeless and taking them to places of safety, - relatives who could put them up, school halls, anywhere out of the wind, cold and danger of collapsing buildings. ...

Excellent details Dave, though I recognize that the experience itself was not excellent. Your recollection of the wet weather that followed accords with mine. As I said in my last post, my grandad spent most of his time trekking up three flights of stairs into the attic of the house he rented in the Park district bailing out pails of water. It took several wks for the landlord to have the leak fixed. In the old part of town, they used real slate roofing tiles, so I remember well the streets being littered with shards of sharp dagger like slates. How about those houses in the corporation estates, not the prefabs, the semis and row houses. If my memory serves me correctly, didn't their roofs have ceramic tiles and did they fly off too? I think the answer may be yes to both questions.

As far as the wind velocity went, yes, I think it was windy all that day, but the brunt of the storm had ended by 8 a.m., I'm thinking.

Wouldn't worry too much about the asbestos business. I worked in an office for over 25 years that had an asbestos infiltrated stucco ceiling in it. One day the roof leaked and it came crashing down all over the place. I've also worked on a building site in Sheffield handling fiber glass batts. No masks were provided in those days and to my distress, I didn't bother wearing gloves either. The list goes on. I try not to think about it. We live charmed lives, those of us who claim to be survivors. Cheers and Merry Christmas.

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