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Park Hill Flats in Sheffield


Sheffield History

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Guest stradlad

Remember it before the PHF. Duke St. Wonderful social atmosphere. Lined with small, independently owned stores. Everything from a fishmonger to a horse meat vendor to a baker to a clothier. There was even a funeral director (maybe more than one) and a church there. Oh, and the old Norfolk Picture Palace.The pavements would be a bustle of activity. People with shopping bags chatting. Like Coronation street without the salaciousness and sensationalism. I left Sheffield for Canada back in '69, so I oversaw the transition to the PHF. Didn't sit well with me, both from a community perspective and an architectural one. The latest iteration of the PHF, if you'll excuse me saying, is ghastly and leaves me scratching my bald head. Why protect those flats when beautiful, architecturally-relevant buildings such as the old Post Office and the old Court House are being left to the pigeons?

That said, as someone who was born toward the end of the war I do understand why high density housing was needed to replace substandard housing. Just wish the ones responsible could have used a bit more taste in blending it in with the rest of the city.

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Park Hill Flats Sheffield.jpg

This exact spot is memorable to me as a kid when I went to the newsagents for a comic and when I came out got splatted right on the head by a pigeon poo

Strange what sticks in your head!

 

(and your hair)

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Park Hill Flats Sheffield.jpg

View down Duke Street with Park Hill flats in view, and on the left the Oddfellows Inn door can be seen. The C&A Funeral Directors on the right opposite the flats

Some pretty cool cars in this too!

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Screenshot 2020-04-07 at 12.27.16.jpg

Pre-war Park Hill was the worst slum in Sheffield. Densely populated with up to 400 people per acre, it consisted of two story back-to-back terraced houses with communal toilets and standpipes.

The residents were working class, doing shifts in the various steel works and cutlery factories across the city. Shifts were long and the working conditions were dangerous. It was a time of hardship, death rates and infant mortality rates were high.

A report in 1936 by the city’s Planning Officer raised issues of housing density, inadequate light and air, existing services, and proposed a redevelopment.

But throughout the Park Hill area there was a real sense of neighbourliness. There was a community spirit, people would work together to help each other. Often neighbours would pull up a chair outside their front doors and engage in friendly conversation.

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Screenshot 2020-04-07 at 17.56.06.jpg

Dempseys on The Pavement in Park Hill Flats complex. Think it was a fashion shop, with shoes and handbags? Can anyone confirm?

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Screenshot 2020-04-07 at 17.58.32.jpg

Park Hill Flats and you can see the milkman putting his float into the service lift

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