Lees Hall, Gleadless.

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.

The Egg Box Town Hall extension.

Photo by neuroticcamel from Sheffield, England (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

I'll admit it. I liked the Egg Box. Plenty of people hated it but I refuse to hate any building that could possess such elements of chunky sticky-inness and sticky outness.

Not only that but it'll always hold a special place in my heart as the first building in Sheffield whose creation and then death I witnessed. Somehow, experiencing the entire lifespan of a building gives you a whole new view of life and the passage of time.

Of course, its great claim to fame was that, in Barry Hines' TV movie Threads, it was the location of the bunker from which Sheffield City Council would run the city in the event of a nuclear holocaust. Given that the council often struggle to run the city when there's not been a nuclear holocaust, perhaps it was a little optimistic to think they could run the place when there was one.

Well, that's all fine and dandy but, for me, its other claim to fame is that, in the 1970s, there was an amusement arcade in Blackpool that had a roof like an egg carton - and thus the two buildings felt like spiritual brothers. That building had a dalek you could sit inside and pretend to kill people with.

Sadly, Sheffield's building lacked such a thing.

No wonder it wasn't popular.

King Edward VII School.

Photo by Wikityke at en.wikipedia [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], from Wikimedia Commons

There are times when it seems like every single famous person from Sheffield went to the same school as each other.

And that school is King Edward VII.

People from the Housemartins went there. People from Def Leppard went there. People from the Human League went there. People from Heaven 17 went there. Matthew Bannister went there. John Rawling went there. Graham Fellows went there. Rony Robinson went there. Professor Ian Fells went there. Clive Betts went there. Even that woman from Countryfile, who seems to be permanently pregnant, went there.

Of course, that impression's completely false - as I didn't got there; proving that even a boy from a bog-standard comprehensive can achieve global superstardom if he only clings to his dreams.

Admittedly, my dreams all involve talking bunny rabbits but how I cling to those talking bunny rabbits, desperate in my hope that they might somehow yet prove to be my one route to immortality.

To be honest, without Googling, there's little knowledge I can impart about the building itself but I can tell you that, of all the buildings in Sheffield, this is the one I would most like to adopt as my secret headquarters.

Admittedly, being so visible might make some feel it would serve poorly as a, "Secret," headquarters but, then, what's the point of having a secret headquarters if you can't shove it in everyone else's face that you have one?

Mappin Art Gallery and City Museum, Weston Park

Photo by Oosoom at en.wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia)
[GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], from Wikimedia Commons

Steve Does Facts: The museum first opened in 1875 and was totally refurbished between 2003 and 2006. It attracts 250,000 visitors a year. The art gallery was closed in the 1950s and 1960s, having been hit by a bomb and partially demolished during the war.

Dinosaurs aren't just ugly, they can also be a major letdown.

The ones in Sheffield's City Museum certainly are.

Mostly because they don't exist.

Nor are there any woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers or even a killer possum to excite the childish imagination.

And so it was that my first ever visit to Sheffield's city museum as a child was a severe disappointment to me.

Still, there were some good things to say about it. It had a stuffed polar bear and it had a bee colony stuck to one of its windows.

On top of that, on the way to it, we went past a genuine skyscraper in the form of the University Arts Tower which, despite it being the tallest building in the city and standing out like a sore thumb in its low level surroundings, I'd up until then somehow totally failed to notice the existence of.

But, of course, the building still manages to be a magical building because it not only contains the city's primary museum but also its major art gallery.

The dual purpose isn't in itself magical. What is magical is that the two buildings are separated by a single glass door in a corridor and that stepping from one building to the other really does feel like you're doing something strangely forbidden, even though you're not. I can only compare it to the feeling you used to get whilst using that mysterious subterranean tunnel that once linked Redgates toy shop to the former Quadrant Stationers.

It's strange how a building that lacks magic through its lack of monsters can instead have a sense of magic through having something as humble as a door.

And perhaps that's why doors still exist and dinosaurs are long gone. If only dinosaurs had had the cunning of doors, maybe, just maybe, they too would still be with us.

The Moor Market.

Photo © Copyright Peter Barr and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Castle Market may have breathed its last but, to take its place, we have the brand new Moor Market which manages to be diametrically opposed to its predecessor both geographically and conceptually, being at the polar opposite end of the town from the traditional markets area - and being what's basically a large shed as opposed to the insane labyrinth of Castle Market.

To be honest, being tight-fisted, I've not yet bought anything there but have had a couple of walks around. What most strikes me is that, despite its greater simplicity, it seems harder to navigate than Castle Market. Castle Market may have seemed convoluted but, thanks to the stairwells and the junction with the neighbouring meat and fish market, you mostly understood where you were relative to the overall building. The Moor Market's lack of such landmarks makes it easier to gain a sense of disorientation.

Design-wise, the most impressive thing about the building is its high-profile arched entrance that contrasts dramatically with the near-secret entrance to Castle Market.

The least impressive thing design-wise is probably the blank, unadorned wall facing Cumberland Street. It does seem odd that the side that faces where all the buses stop should be so anonymous and present no noticeable point of access. On the other hand, the side that faces the neighbouring car park has two entrances. Clearly, when they were designing it, the council were far more concerned about convenience for drivers than for bus passengers. It seems some people's fears about the new markets being part of an obsessive council drive towards gentrification of the city may not be totally unfounded.

Overall, despite those reservations, I think I have to conclude that the lighter, less claustrophobic feel and the lack of internal staircases, make it a better place to shop than Castle Market. But the real good news for me is the building has a large Iceland and Poundland built into the side of it which is perfect for a man of my quality.

According to The Sheffield Telegraph, footfall on the Moor is up 30% thanks to the new building's opening. Hopefully this bodes well for the future development plans of the rest of the Moor.

Sadly, how footfall is holding up on Waingate since Castle Market closed, has yet to be reported.

Castle Market.

Castle Market photo © Copyright David Dixon and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

In a tragedy for all lovers of rampantly lunatic architecture, Sheffield's Castle Market was closed down last week, to be replaced by a spanking new indoor market at the bottom of the Moor. From comments on various sites, it seems few'll miss it.

But I certainly will.

I'll miss it for three reasons.

One was that I have happy childhood memories of it. I got my first ever box of Lego there, from a stall that had a Lego model of Queen Elizabeth as its centrepiece. I got a Dalek money box from there - possibly from the same stall. I also got a machine gun (admittedly not a real one) from the market, and a banjo. Truly it was a place of many and magical delights for a child.

Secondly, in the good old days it had a pet shop in one of the units that lined the building's ground floor exterior. That shop's downstairs holds no great memories for me but the upstairs had goldfish and snakes. No trip to town was complete without a trip to see the snakes.

The other reason is that it's a building that makes no sense at all. So random is its exterior that it's impossible to close your eyes and imagine walking round the outside of it. It's like a whole bunch of different buildings have collided with each other through some process of continental drift.

Likewise with its oddly labyrinthine interior that left you with the feeling you could roam it every hour of every day of your life and somehow still never fully know it. There'd always be some nook, some cranny, you'd never before encountered. That might not have it a sensible design for a market building but it did mean it was impossible to get bored by it.

I assume it's a truly unique building because I can't believe anyone would ever have been daft enough to build another market anything like it but, of course, that means the complexity and randomness that made it a bizarre design for a market also made it seem oddly special.

Don Valley Stadium.

Photo by Matthew Hatton [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Some things in life seem designed to make you feel old.

Don Valley Stadium is one of them.

When they knocked down the old Egg Box Town Hall extension, around a decade ago, I suddenly got a glimpse of what it is to be mortal, as it was the first building I ever saw demolished that I'd seen being built in the first place. Thanks to that, I was suddenly aware of the passage of time in a way I'd never been before.

Since then, various things that were built in my childhood have fallen by the wayside but now, as though to rub it in, they're demolishing things that were built in my mid-twenties. What kind of madness is this? It's the sort of thing that could make one feel old enough to be Methuselah.

As for the stadium, it was a pretty thing, blessed with a roof of airy elegance - and clearly the UK's biggest and best athletics stadium for around twenty years. But, despite being used for a million and one other things, it hardly ever seemed to get used for what it had been built for - international athletics. With a need to cut spending and another smaller stadium nearby, I suppose it's inevitable it was going to get the chop but it's hard to escape the feeling of a wasted opportunity and to wonder just what it was the athletics authorities had against it, that prevented them granting it any events.

Sheffield's Lyceum Theatre.

Photo copyright Gregory Deryckére . Re-used under this Creative Commons License.

When it was announced in the late 1980s that they were going to do up and re-open the Lyceum Theatre, I thought it was madness. What a squalid and appalling looking building it was, surely fit only for demolition.

But what a fool I was. For it wasn't just re-opened, it was transformed into a thing almost unrecognisable, changing into something vaguely reminiscent of an overgrown cake.

I must admit that my entire experience of having been inside the Lyceum is of attending a version of Dick Whittington starring Vince Hill in the late 1960s. This would have made me four at the time, meaning it's remarkable that my memories of the visit are so clear.

I remember Vince striding around with his worldly possessions dangling in a spotted hanky from the end of a stick.

I remember his cat looking suspiciously like a woman in a costume. I was most impressed by her tail.

Most of all I remember my nan telling me the theatre's boxes were for visiting royalty, like the queen, to sit in. I can confess I was highly disappointed that the queen didn't show up for that performance.

And you know what? She's not shown up in my life at any other point either. Grrr.

Sheffield's Town Hall TARDIS.

Photo by David Rogers [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

What kind of fool am I to have got so far into this blog without ever having once mentioned the most important structure in the history of Sheffield?

I am, of course, referring to Sheffield's TARDIS, parked just outside the Town Hall; no doubt so the Doctor can rush into the building and sort out the council, once and for all, with his sonic screwdriver.

The door's sometimes left open, meaning you can see the interior. Rather disappointingly, it's not bigger on the inside, not does it have a control console. Clearly that must be a trick the Doctor's pulled to lure his enemies into a false sense of security.

Unlike that one on TV, Sheffield's TARDIS is made of concrete. Just what you need for keeping out daleks. Or, as they're known in Sheffield, Dee Dah Leks.

Sheffield St Marie's Catholic Cathedral.

Photo by Chris Downer [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Hooray! It's Sheffield's Catholic Cathedral, otherwise known as St Marie's Church, which manages to be even less impressive than its nearby Anglican counterpart. Somehow you can't help feeling the city got the fuzzy end of the lollipop when it came to religious buildings.

Admittedly I've never been inside, so it might be magnificence itself in there but, given the modesty of its exterior, I suspect it isn't.

Still, at least its existence means the city can boast it has two cathedrals, which is something not every town can claim.

Nearby, in this shot, can be seen the octagonal roof of the Crucible Theatre and, beyond that, the listed monolith that is Park Hill Flats.

Sheffield Cathedral.

Photo by Chris Downer [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

I was going to say Sheffield's Anglican Cathedral is possibly the worst cathedral on the planet Earth, as it's clearly just an ordinary church that someone's decided to pretend is something rather grander. But then I remembered we have an even worse cathedral on nearby Norfolk Street.

I'm not sure what it says about me but one of my favourite thrills as a child was walking over the graves in its courtyard and knowing there were people buried down there. I'm not sure if those graves are still there, or if they were removed to make way for the more recent Supertram shenanigans.

Still, despite appearances, it does have at least something in common with the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, which is that, like that building, it's not finished. After World War Two, there was a plan to enlarge it and add an extra spire. Sadly, that never happened, although a more modest extension was added in the 1960s. Despite being in a far more modern style than the rest of the building, the extension fits in surprisingly well and is the sticky-forward bit on the left of the above photo.

Sheffield United's Cherry Street car park.

Photo  © Copyright M J Richardson and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Granted there aren't many people who'd be excited by a photo of a football ground's car park but no one ever said I'm not the saddest of individuals.

What makes this photo a thing of magic and wonder to me is that it's taken from the stadium hotel and therefore provides a view I'd not normally have.

Also, the angle makes it difficult to see the awful red and white striped cladding that's been affixed to the back of the South Stand in recent years.

Yes, I know red and white stripes are the club's official colours - but such a colour scheme looks a lot better on a shirt than it does on the back of a building.

All I can do is hope that, at some point, someone at the club sees sense and restores the stand's exterior to its original uncluttered appearance and at last we'll be able to appreciate all that concrete finny goodness without it making our eyes hurt.

The Roundhouse, Ringinglow.

Photo by Martin Speck [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Even though I've never been to Ringinglow, it's shaping up to be an exciting place for me.

First we had its alpaca farm and now we have its roundhouse which was, it seems, an 18th Century toll house. Currently serving as a proper house, it's now a listed building.

Apparently, Ringinglow was on the traditional border between the Saxon kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria and may have once possessed a prehistoric burial mound from which it got its name.

Inter-kingdom borders, alpacas, prehistoric burial mounds? Is there no limit to the wonders that Ringinglow can fling at a man?

The old post office, Fitzalan Square.

Photo © Copyright Julian Osley and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Sheffield's old main post office building in Fitzalan Square's been empty for years, ever since the post office moved its operations to Castle House. Clearly that wasn't the smartest of moves, as Castle House then closed down - apart from the bit that houses the post office.

Since then the old Fitzalan Square building's fallen into decay and decrepitude but at last there's hope for it with news that it's to be converted to student flats and an educational building. As well as the existing building, which'll be refurbished, there'll be a fourteen and a twenty two story block of flats for international students built on the Flat Street/Pond Hill end of the site.

It all sounds exciting and glamorous but I must admit my main memory of the building is that, when I was little, there was a TARDIS-style police box outside, which sadly no longer stands. I demand the developers of the site bring it back.

I fear my demands may be ignored.

Grrr.

More info on the planned development here.

The Herdings - Herdings.

Photo by Mick Knapton (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Up until last year I never knew that Herdings was named after an actual building called The Herdings. It's even more odd as it's a building I'd passed plenty of times in my childhood - and even recently - without ever knowing what it was. It was always obvious even to my untutored eye that it was far older than the rest of the estate in which it sits but I'd assumed it must date back to the 19th Century and assumed it was probably an old water company house or some such.

It was a bit of a shock therefore to discover, a few months back, that its origins date all the way back to the 14th century, with later additions in the 17th and that some would argue it's the second oldest building in Sheffield.

This great age is made all the more surreal by the fact it's in a 1950s/60s council estate and slap-bang next to two of the city's most high profile tower blocks. It's such incongruities that lend a city magic and intrigue.

Apparently, it caught fire a few years back but has since been fully restored and now seems to serve as some sort of community centre which is a relief as it's a Grade II listed building and you wouldn't want such a thing to become derelict.

Mayfield Alpaca Farm, Ringinglow.

Photo © Copyright Penny Mayes and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Let's be honest, when you think of Sheffield, the first thing you think of is not necessarily alpacas. But here they are, blundering around near Ringinglow. Don't you just want to run up to them and give them a great big hug?

Admittedly I don't know how good an idea that is. I don't know how alpacas take to random hugging but personally I'm willing to risk it.

Arundel Gate.

Photo by St BC (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Has there been anywhere in Sheffield changed more in spirit in the last decade than Arundel Gate? When I was little, it was a wide, impenetrable road with barely any buildings on it. To get from one side to the other, you had to risk your life sprinting between its barriers, or use one of a string of sinister underpasses. And, when you emerged on the other side, you still felt a million miles away from anywhere that was actually worth getting to.

Now it's a much narrower road with lots of buildings on it. In the process, it's developed more of an air of belonging in the hub of a major city centre and also lost its previous mood of limbo-esque desolation.

It still has its failings. The old Top Rank/Fiesta complex is still there and the buildings at the Castle Square end are less than impressive but, for me at least, it's a vast improvement on how it once was.

Bishop's House, Meersbrook Park.

Photo by Martin Speck [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Like the Howard and the Queen's Head, it's another of those buildings that's pretending to be a zebra. I just hope there're no lions around, or it'll be in serious trouble.

Actually, I don't know that much about it, other than it was built around 1500 and is now a museum.

Apparently, it gets its name because two bishops were supposed to have grown up in it, though that may well be apocryphal.

The Odeon/Fiesta/Top Rank/02 Academy complex, Pond Street.

Photo by Nigel Chadwick [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Here it is, my nomination for the worst building ever erected in the entire history of Sheffield.

For some reason, in the 1960s, someone decided it'd be a great idea to build a huge concrete cliff on Pond/Flat Street to cut the bus and railway stations off from the city centre - and then to cover it with what seemed to be tiles stolen from a public lavatory. The only way to navigate through the complex was through narrow, spiralling stairwells or via cramped escalators that never seemed to work - all imbued with a sense of menace that grew with every step you took. Once you actually reached the top of the complex, you then had to navigate disturbing underpasses to actually escape it and reach the city centre.

Just to make it even more user-friendly, the site incorporated a porn cinema and lots multi-storey parking.

Just over twenty years ago, the complex became even more isolating when the council decided to get rid of the escalators that connected it to the bus station, meaning you couldn't even properly access the row of shops in its mid sections, thus sealing their doom and leaving a great chunk of it derelict. It's genius like that that wins councils awards.

Photos of the site before it was built really are some of the most baffling things I've ever seen, with strange and random buildings dotted around on a rather wild hill. Were they houses? Were they industrial buildings? I really have no idea but, for the sheer strangeness of it all, I really do wish they'd been allowed to stand.

St Paul's Tower, Arundel Gate.

 Photo  © Copyright Neil Theasby
and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

At last! Because you the reader demanded it! It's that building!

It started out as the Conran Tower. Then it was, "City Lofts." Then it was St Paul's Tower. But, whatever you call it, you can't ignore it. At thirty two storeys, stuck atop a hill overlooking the railway station, it's Sheffield's tallest and most visible building.

And what an odd structure it is. When the sun hits it at the right angle - usually early in the morning - it can look golden, gleaming, optimistic and sparkling.

When the sun doesn't hit it from the right angle - or doesn't hit it at all - it can look suspiciously like a dull, brown utilitarian 1960s block of council flats.

I do love the way it totally dwarfs the mock Tudorness of the Howard in this shot. I can't help feeling they should add a thirty storey vertical extension to the Howard to bring it up to the same height and turn it into Sheffield's first mock Tudor skyscraper.

A quick Google for images of mock Tudor skyscrapers suggests to me that there're no mock Tudor skyscrapers anywhere on Earth. Given that there are mock Gothic and mock Classical skyscrapers, the lack of mock Tudors seems an egregious omission that we can only hope someone will one day put right.