Friday 28 March 2014

Lees Hall, Gleadless.

Lees Hall duck pond, Gleadless Valley, Sheffield
Pond near the site of Lees Hall Farm - (Neil Theasby) / CC BY-SA 2.0
You have to hand it to Sheffield City Council. There's not many municipalities would think it a good idea to demolish a 16th Century mansion in order to create a rubbish tip - but Sheffield City Council did exactly that in the late 1950s when they knocked down Lees Hall in Gleadless Valley, in order to create what would later become the Blackstock Road Dump-It site.

Having done that, they then bulldozed the rubble into the house's duck pond, in order to completely remove all signs that any such thing had ever existed.

This is of course one of the great architectural scandals of Sheffield and would never be allowed today.

Lees Hall was a three story, triple gabled structure but all that remains of it now is the name - which lent itself to the neighbouring Lees Hall golf club - a bit of rubble and the above ditch which is the last remnant of the duck pond. Up until a few years ago, even that was lost but it was exposed during a clean-up of the site, meaning we can at least have a tantalising glimpse of what was once there.

That may be a picture of Lees Hall as it is now but pictures of it shortly before its destruction can be found at Picture Sheffield.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Steve - The term Lees Hall caught my eye. Then I looked on the map and see that Sheffield is almost due West from Ashton Under-Lyne. My great grandmother was born in Lees, a village near Oldham and Ashton Under-Lyne in far East Lancashire. There is also a cemetery called Lees Field nearby where I think some of the family are buried. I wonder if there is some connection between the Lees Hall name and the Lees names in Lancashire?

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