Orwell then & now

[Guest Jeremy]

Does anyone have any idea where this place described by George Orwell (who, as we know loved Sheffield ) is /was?:

One scene especially lingers in my mind. A frightful patch of waste ground (somehow, up there, a patch of waste ground attains a squalor that would be impossible even in London) trampled bare of grass and littered with newspapers and old saucepans. To the right an isolated row of gaunt four-roomed houses, dark red, blackened by smoke. To the left an interminable vista of factory chimneys, chimney beyond chimney, fading away into a dim blackish haze. Behind me a railway embankment made of the slag from furnaces. In front, across the patch of waste ground, a cubical building of red and yellow brick, with the sign ‘Thomas Grocock, Haulage Contractor’.

it seems like there should be enough information in the quote to work it out.

Thanks,

Jeremy

[RichardB]

Does anyone have any idea where this place described by George Orwell (who, as we know loved Sheffield ) is /was?:

it seems like there should be enough information in the quote to work it out.

Thanks,

Jeremy

How would Sorby Street and district fit in to this description ?

[dunsbyowl1867]

How would Sorby Street and district fit in to this description ?

We've discussed this before but not perhaps the specific point!

http://www.sheffieldhistory.co.uk/forums/i...5&hl=orwell

[siren]

In 1936 when he stayed in Sheffield he lodged at Wallace Road, Neepsend, it could have been somewhere around there I suppose. It fits in with the railway.

[neddy]

In 1936 when he stayed in Sheffield he lodged at Wallace Road, Neepsend, it could have been somewhere around there I suppose. It fits in with the railway.

Nope the railway banking is clay shale.

[Guest Jeremy]

Thanks for the replies. I'd actually searched the forum for orwell before posting but not found the thread linked to by Dunsbyowl.

I'd looked at Sorby Street because there was a 'John Grocock, coal dealer & greengrocer' there in 1893, who might be the same firm as the 'John Grocock, haulage contractor' mentioned in Kelly's 1919 directory. But this firm was at the junction with Kirk Street which seems puts Wicker Arches maybe too far for him to talk about the embankment as being behind him, and if his back was to Wicker Arches, I think that his view of factory chimneys from there would be to the right not to the left.

Jeremy