Building Trade In Sheffield

[RichardB]

Building Trade in Sheffield.

During the years 1838 39 40 and 41 the town of Sheffield was overbuilt to a very large extent.

The natural result of this rash speculation was depreciation of property In the course of the five years following houses and buildings generally fell from 25 to 30 per cent.

The owners of cottage property suffered especially and it was a frequent saying then that the rents actually received for small houses were barely sufficient to keep them in repair.

For a time the sound of the trowel was rarely heard, the builder's occupation appeared to be almost gone. With a drooping trade, tenantless streets (in 1841 there were 3223 houses un-let) remained in their desolation.

But a bright change has come. Cottage property is no longer profitless. There is now an absolute and genuine demand for more houses in the town and, in obedience to the call, walls and roofs are rapidly rising about us.

We understand that new houses, even while unfinished are quickly occupied and that yet numbers of working men experience real inconvenience in being obliged to live far away from their places of employment.

Building operations may be observed in many directions, but they are most in force in the district lying between Spital Hill and Attercliffe Road. There a new town seems to be springing up with shops and tavern in embryo.

With a full knowledge of the hard lesson taught some seven years ago, it it to be hoped that a rage for speculative building may not possess this generation of builders in Sheffield.

In all probability the time is not far distant when the land adjoining the available portions of the Manchester Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway nearest to the town will also be covered with furnaces and workshops.

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Written in 1851, if only they knew ...