60's Houses.

[vox]

Apart from this one, I don't think I've ever seen a 60's building in Shefield which deserves to be standing. Especially when they are stuck in an area where they just don't fit in. This, in fact, applies right up to the present day.

The exeption in my opinion is this icon of 60's design on Encliffe Grove Avenue. It some how just looks right, even in it's Victorian surroundings. The owner (from what you can tell from a nosy glance through windows) has kept it's interior and furniture to match, with classic plastic chairs, glass-top table etc. Other nearby 60's/70's style houses just look wrong and out of place.

Anybody else find this one attractive? Are there any more?

[DaveH]

Apart from this one, I don't think I've ever seen a 60's building in Shefield which deserves to be standing.

Oh dear

Does that include some of our iconic 60's classics like the Park Hill and Hyde Park flats?

When originally built in the 60's they were rated as archetectural designs of significant merit.

[vox]

Oh dear

Does that include some of our iconic 60's classics like the Park Hill and Hyde Park flats?

When originally built in the 60's they were rated as archetectural designs of significant merit.

And I was oh so sad when the beautiful Broomhall Flats complex (Built 68/69 ??) was demolished. he he

[DaveH]

And I was oh so sad when the beautiful Broomhall Flats complex (Built 68/69 ??) was demolished.

I had an uncle lived in Broomhall Flats.

Prefabricated concrete sections used in their construction.

Suffered badly from damp, blackmould, mildew and other damp related problems which other 60's built flat complexes (Park Hill, Hyde Park, Norfolk Park, Kelvin Hall) seemed to largely escape.

[vox]

I worked at Surmanco (fronting Fitzwilliam Street) at the time they were building Broomhall. They used Devonshire Green as the casting plant for the prefab sections.

[ukelele lady]

I had an uncle lived in Broomhall Flats.

Prefabricated concrete sections used in their construction.

Suffered badly from damp, blackmould, mildew and other damp related problems which other 60's built flat complexes (Park Hill, Hyde Park, Norfolk Park, Kelvin Hall) seemed to largely escape.

Remember the poor builders who were killed when the concrete sections fell like dominos?

[RichardB]

Remember the poor builders who were killed when the concrete sections fell like dominos?

I know nothing of this; too young by the sounds of it.

[DaveH]

I know nothing of this; too young by the sounds of it.

I can remember it, Ukelele Lady is correct, the building of Broomhall Flats was notable for the number of accidents which occured while they were being constructed in this unusual way using large precast concrete sections. Unfortunately moving a large, heavy piece of concrete into position is not the easiest or safest job and at least one accident proved fatal.

[DaveH]

Anyway, returning to vox's original point on houses built in the sixties.

The one he shows looks typically "swinging sixties" and at the time would have looked very modern, a design of its time influenced by the new styles of architecture coming into vogue is the country recovered financially and started to liven up again after years of austerity throughout the late 40's and 1950's imposed by the post war recovery period.

However, certain aspects of the design of this house clearly date back to the pre war period of the 1930's. Some of its geometry and use of regular geometrical shapes (eg, the round "porthole" windows contrasting with the very rectangular French doors) are very reminiscent of the Art Deco style of this period while the way the single storey building is "landscaped in" to its surroundings and its overall shape owes more than a passing glance to the German Bauhaus school of architecture also dating to the 1930's.

Makes you wonder then, it may have been built as a modern 60's house but just exactly how old is the design.

Not that many houses were built in Sheffield like this in the 1930's, even today such a design would be considered luxurious and affluent and would command a correspondingly high market value.