“Sheffield, I suppose, could justly claim to be called the ugliest town in the Old World: its inhabitants, who want it to be pre-eminent in everything, very likely do make that claim for it. It has a population of half a million and it contains fewer decent buildings than the average East Anglian village of five hundred.”
George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 1936.
In the diary of his visit to the city, George Orwell remarks that Sheffield is “said to be built on seven hills, like Rome”. This unlikely claim re-surfaced in the publicity for the most recent publication about Sheffield, the Pevsner Architecture Guide.
Whilst there’s no doubt that Sheffield is an exceptionally hilly place, I’ve never been able to work out how people arrive at the magic figure of seven hills. Topographically speaking, it would be more accurate to say that Sheffield is built at the confluence of several river valleys, which carve the Pennines foothills into a series of ridges. The centre of the city lies in a dip where the valleys of the Don, Sheaf and Porter meet.
Because the centre is more or less surrounded by high ground, it is possible to get some dramatic views across the city. Over the past few months I’ve been photographing these views, trying to find new angles on my old hometown. I've found that the most interesting vantage points lie to the southeast of the city centre: Norfolk Heritage Park, the Cholera Monument and Sky Edge.
Sheffield has gone through many changes in the 70 years since George Orwell's visit: the Victorian slum housing has long since been cleared away; much of the city centre was flattened by bombing in World War II; the industrial east end was laid waste by the recession of the 1980s, when 40,000 steel workers were thrown on the scrap heap. As local people used to say, "What the Luftwaffe started, Margaret Thatcher finished".
So, could Sheffield still be called "the ugliest town in the Old World"? Well, I'm not sure I'd describe it as ugly... but it is a bit of a mess. There are still precious few buildings of architectural merit. Viewed from a distance, the city centre is a haphazard jumble of nondescript structures.
Like many other cities in Britain, Sheffield is in the midst of a building boom. Blocks of "lifestyle apartments" are springing up all around the city centre. Call me cynical, but I can't help wondering how long they're going to last.
Within my lifetime, some parts of the city have been re-developed three times. Victorian back-to-backs were replaced in the 1960s by "streets in the sky", some of which proved to be disastrous experiments in social engineering. The least popular high-rise blocks were torn down in the 1980s, to be replaced by cheap-and-cheerful low-rise developments. Some of these turned out to be so poorly designed and shoddily built that they were demolished after less than 20 years. The current crop of private apartment blocks appear to better designed, but I've noticed some alarming examples of poor workmanship and substandard materials.
For me, the most attractive aspect of Sheffield is its "golden frame": the magnificent countryside that lies a few miles from the city... but that's another post!
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