Just been reading a passage in Orwell's 'Road to Wigan Pier', the cheeky b*****d calls Sheffield the 'ugliest place in England'. This was in 1936, and although I was only 3 years old then, and not old enough for it to register I feel a bit miffed about his opinion. Mucky, yes, ugly, no.

Just been reading a passage in Orwell's 'Road to Wigan Pier', the cheeky b*****d calls Sheffield the 'ugliest place in England'. This was in 1936, and although I was only 3 years old then, and not old enough for it to register I feel a bit miffed about his opinion. Mucky, yes, ugly, no.

Not impressed by Orwell, just another one who accepts the hospitality however meagre , then insults the host.

I love George Orwell. :)

As I wasn't around Sheffield in the 1930s I can't comment on his description of Sheffield.

I love Sheffield but I'd acknowldge that even today it's not exactly a beautiful city. :)

A quick tour of www.picturesheffield.com will confirm that Orwell was more than likely correct - some of the derelict looking places that were in fact inhabited by people are quite shameful.

Try the keyword 'park' or 'market' to see 'ugly' at it's height ;)

A quick tour of www.picturesheffield.com will confirm that Orwell was more than likely correct - some of the derelict looking places that were in fact inhabited by people are quite shameful.
-------
The same can be said of any city of that era, Orwell did tend to be somewhat bias.
My opinion that is.

Pictures of Liverpool of that era are nowhere near as vile :gag:

A quick tour of www.picturesheffield.com will confirm that Orwell was more than likely correct - some of the derelict looking places that were in fact inhabited by people are quite shameful.

Try the keyword 'park' or 'market' to see 'ugly' at it's height ;)

The places where people lived were quite shameful, but don't forget the people who lived in them built Sheffield.
Exploitation by the middle and upper classes,is the ugliness.

I'm not 'forgetting' anything - that doesn't alter the fact that Sheffield in the 1930's was hardly a holiday destination, or a mecca for architecture buffs

http://www.picturesheffield.com/jpgh/s11485.jpg
http://www.picturesheffield.com/jpgh/s11490.jpg
http://www.picturesheffield.com/jpgh/s07466.jpg

http://www.picturesheffield.com/jpgh/u00909.jpg
http://www.picturesheffield.com/jpgh/u00908.jpg
http://www.picturesheffield.com/jpgh/s11501.jpg

http://www.picturesheffield.com/jpgh/s13274.jpg
http://www.picturesheffield.com/jpgh/s13283.jpg
http://www.picturesheffield.com/jpgh/s13954.jpg

http://www.picturesheffield.com/jpgh/s00021.jpg
http://www.picturesheffield.com/jpgh/s00007.jpg
http://www.picturesheffield.com/jpgh/s00257.jpg

Need I go on?

Pictures of Liverpool of that era are nowhere near as vile :gag:

Bessie gives a good description,
http://www.liverpoolpictorial.co.uk/bessiebraddock/index.htm

need i go on :hihi:

Just been reading a passage in Orwell's 'Road to Wigan Pier', the cheeky b*****d calls Sheffield the 'ugliest place in England'. This was in 1936, and although I was only 3 years old then, and not old enough for it to register I feel a bit miffed about his opinion. Mucky, yes, ugly, no.

Hello,

Hope you are well.

I just came across this while doing some research. I think you might be interested in my posts on the subject in my blog 'Beyond 1984' at http://www.rivedon.co.uk/.

Best regards,

Ian Rivedon

Not impressed by Orwell, just another one who accepts the hospitality however meagre , then insults the host.

If you mean Mr and Mrs Brookes then I think he was perfectly in his rights.After all they were moaning that a lodger was taking rather a long time to die.:rolleyes:

I love George Orwell. :)

As I wasn't around Sheffield in the 1930s I can't comment on his description of Sheffield.

I love Sheffield but I'd acknowldge that even today it's not exactly a beautiful city. :)



He's my favourite author.I did a few essays on him for my degree, he was a pleasure to read.

Hello,

Hope you are well.

I just came across this while doing some research. I think you might be interested in my posts on the subject in my blog 'Beyond 1984' at http://www.rivedon.co.uk/.

Best regards,

Ian Rivedon

That brought back some memories. I worked at the Neepsend Gasworks 12 hrs/day, 7days/week for a year 1957/58 to save up enough to put a down payment on a house.

Texas,I PM'd you

I remember a winter afternoon in the dreadful environs of Wigan. All
round was the lunar landscape of slag-heaps, and to the north, through the
passes, as it were, between the mountains of slag, you could see the
factory chimneys sending out their plumes of smoke. The canal path was a
mixture of cinders and frozen mud, criss-crossed by the imprints of
innumerable clogs, and all round, as far as the slag-heaps in the distance,
stretched the 'flashes'--pools of stagnant water that had seeped into the
hollows caused by the subsidence of ancient pits. It was horribly cold. The
'flashes' were covered with ice the colour of raw umber, the bargemen were
muffled to the eyes in sacks, the lock gates wore beards of ice. It seemed
a world from which vegetation had been banished; nothing existed except
smoke, shale, ice, mud, ashes, and foul water. But even Wigan is beautiful
compared with Sheffield. 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. And the stench! If at
rare moments you stop smelling sulphur it is because you have begun
smelling gas. Even the shallow river that runs through the town is-usually
bright yellow with some chemical or other. Once I halted in the street and
counted the factory chimneys I could see; there were thirty-three of them,
but there would have been far more if the air had not been obscured by
smoke. One scene especially lingers in my mind. A frightful patch of waste
ground (somehow, up there, a patch of waste ground attains a squalor that
would be impossible even in London) trampled bare of grass and littered
with newspapers and old saucepans. To the right an isolated row of gaunt
four-roomed houses, dark red, blackened by smoke. To the left an
interminable vista of factory chimneys, chimney beyond chimney, fading away
into a dim blackish haze. Behind me a railway embankment made of the slag
from furnaces. In front, across the patch of waste ground, a cubical
building of red and yellow brick, with the sign 'Thomas Grocock, Haulage
Contractor'.

At night, when you cannot see the hideous shapes of the houses and the
blackness of everything, a town like Sheffield assumes a kind of sinister
magnificence. Sometimes the drifts of smoke are rosy with sulphur, and
serrated flames, like circular saws, squeeze themselves out from beneath
the cowls of the foundry chimneys. Through the open doors of foundries you
see fiery serpents of iron being hauled to and fro by redlit boys, and you
hear the whizz and thump of steam hammers and the scream of the iron under
the blow.

I remember a winter afternoon in the dreadful environs of Wigan. All
round was the lunar landscape of slag-heaps, and to the north, through the
passes, as it were, between the mountains of slag, you could see the
factory chimneys sending out their plumes of smoke. The canal path was a
mixture of cinders and frozen mud, criss-crossed by the imprints of
innumerable clogs, and all round, as far as the slag-heaps in the distance,
stretched the 'flashes'--pools of stagnant water that had seeped into the
hollows caused by the subsidence of ancient pits. It was horribly cold. The
'flashes' were covered with ice the colour of raw umber, the bargemen were
muffled to the eyes in sacks, the lock gates wore beards of ice. It seemed
a world from which vegetation had been banished; nothing existed except
smoke, shale, ice, mud, ashes, and foul water. But even Wigan is beautiful
compared with Sheffield. 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. And the stench! If at
rare moments you stop smelling sulphur it is because you have begun
smelling gas. Even the shallow river that runs through the town is-usually
bright yellow with some chemical or other. Once I halted in the street and
counted the factory chimneys I could see; there were thirty-three of them,
but there would have been far more if the air had not been obscured by
smoke. One scene especially lingers in my mind. A frightful patch of waste
ground (somehow, up there, a patch of waste ground attains a squalor that
would be impossible even in London) trampled bare of grass and littered
with newspapers and old saucepans. To the right an isolated row of gaunt
four-roomed houses, dark red, blackened by smoke. To the left an
interminable vista of factory chimneys, chimney beyond chimney, fading away
into a dim blackish haze. Behind me a railway embankment made of the slag
from furnaces. In front, across the patch of waste ground, a cubical
building of red and yellow brick, with the sign 'Thomas Grocock, Haulage
Contractor'.

At night, when you cannot see the hideous shapes of the houses and the
blackness of everything, a town like Sheffield assumes a kind of sinister
magnificence. Sometimes the drifts of smoke are rosy with sulphur, and
serrated flames, like circular saws, squeeze themselves out from beneath
the cowls of the foundry chimneys. Through the open doors of foundries you
see fiery serpents of iron being hauled to and fro by redlit boys, and you
hear the whizz and thump of steam hammers and the scream of the iron under
the blow.

Yes-a lovely piece of writing.
A description of a place where true working class folk battled for an existence. It shouldnt be forgotton that this was a time of austerity. The Sheffield people he describes didn't ask to be born at that time.

Texas,I PM'd you
Hi dex, I haven't recieved your PM owing to the fact that my Inbox is full. In fact it's been full for some time and even following the instructions to empty it doesn't seem to make any difference.

He was obviously referring to post 1984, he should see some of it now, particularly the City Centre. :gag:

A nice quote from GO. I always thought he was readable from a very young age and his description of Neepsend was very dramatic. The thing was though, if a person was actually born and raised in an environment like the one he described they wouldn't think it was any kind of big deal, especially if they were ill educated and hadn't been anywhere, like myself. I lived not all that far from Neepsend, but on top of the hill, top of Woodside Lane, the air was a bit better and we could look down on the fogs of Neepsend. The buildings weren't all that different to how he describes them though.
I think that Orwell will always be castigated by some people because he was basically a 'toff', and well, everybody is entitled to their opinions. When I first saw a photograph of him I thought he was a 'spiv', and knocked out dodgy nylons from a suitcase. I was very young though.

Yes, Texas, although, like you, I love Orwell 's prose, he certainly didn 't look like a writer from an upper-middle class family.
In fact do you remember the comedian Arthur English ? [ the Spiv ] I think Orwell had very similar features. I can never imagine Orwell at Eton or in the Colonial service in Burma. On top of that I bet he stood out like a sore thumb on his ' in the depths ' travels in the '30 's, due to his accent. An unusual man, on the borderline of eccentricity -----but describes England and the English beautifully.

The places where people lived were quite shameful, but don't forget the people who lived in them built Sheffield.
Exploitation by the middle and upper classes,is the ugliness.
Bang on Retep and they are still at it!

A nice quote from GO. I always thought he was readable from a very young age and his description of Neepsend was very dramatic. The thing was though, if a person was actually born and raised in an environment like the one he described they wouldn't think it was any kind of big deal, especially if they were ill educated and hadn't been anywhere, like myself. I lived not all that far from Neepsend, but on top of the hill, top of Woodside Lane, the air was a bit better and we could look down on the fogs of Neepsend. The buildings weren't all that different to how he describes them though.
I think that Orwell will always be castigated by some people because he was basically a 'toff', and well, everybody is entitled to their opinions. When I first saw a photograph of him I thought he was a 'spiv', and knocked out dodgy nylons from a suitcase. I was very young though.

You were in the thick of it.

Hi dex, I haven't recieved your PM owing to the fact that my Inbox is full. In fact it's been full for some time and even following the instructions to empty it doesn't seem to make any difference.

I was just wondering what promted you to visit Orwell.
My eyes are going I listen to audio books and Wigan Pier is on my list .
Just thought it was a coincidence

The thing is dex I've always done a lot of reading. Although I haven't read any of George Orwell's work for a while and I read the reason for this thread in a newspaper profile. I obviously had forgotten his view of 30's Sheffield.
For myself, I'm currently reading as much of the late Kingsley Amis's stuff I can lay my hands on, including the poetry. I'm of the opinion that if he hadn't written the novel 'Lucky Jim', many of the attitudes of today wouldn't have been born. Great novel, lousy film.

I remember a winter afternoon in the dreadful environs of Wigan. All
round was the lunar landscape of slag-heaps, and to the north, through the
passes, as it were, between the mountains of slag, you could see the
factory chimneys sending out their plumes of smoke. The canal path was a
mixture of cinders and frozen mud, criss-crossed by the imprints of
innumerable clogs, and all round, as far as the slag-heaps in the distance,
stretched the 'flashes'--pools of stagnant water that had seeped into the
hollows caused by the subsidence of ancient pits. It was horribly cold. The
'flashes' were covered with ice the colour of raw umber, the bargemen were
muffled to the eyes in sacks, the lock gates wore beards of ice. It seemed
a world from which vegetation had been banished; nothing existed except
smoke, shale, ice, mud, ashes, and foul water. But even Wigan is beautiful
compared with Sheffield. 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. And the stench! If at
rare moments you stop smelling sulphur it is because you have begun
smelling gas. Even the shallow river that runs through the town is-usually
bright yellow with some chemical or other. Once I halted in the street and
counted the factory chimneys I could see; there were thirty-three of them,
but there would have been far more if the air had not been obscured by
smoke. One scene especially lingers in my mind. A frightful patch of waste
ground (somehow, up there, a patch of waste ground attains a squalor that
would be impossible even in London) trampled bare of grass and littered
with newspapers and old saucepans. To the right an isolated row of gaunt
four-roomed houses, dark red, blackened by smoke. To the left an
interminable vista of factory chimneys, chimney beyond chimney, fading away
into a dim blackish haze. Behind me a railway embankment made of the slag
from furnaces. In front, across the patch of waste ground, a cubical
building of red and yellow brick, with the sign 'Thomas Grocock, Haulage
Contractor'.

At night, when you cannot see the hideous shapes of the houses and the
blackness of everything, a town like Sheffield assumes a kind of sinister
magnificence. Sometimes the drifts of smoke are rosy with sulphur, and
serrated flames, like circular saws, squeeze themselves out from beneath
the cowls of the foundry chimneys. Through the open doors of foundries you
see fiery serpents of iron being hauled to and fro by redlit boys, and you
hear the whizz and thump of steam hammers and the scream of the iron under
the blow.


This is an excellent parody of the great man-even the vocabulary is part of his repertoire.

I bow to your superior knowledge, gnvqsos.

This is an excellent parody of the great man-even the vocabulary is part of his repertoire.

Parody?

It's a direct quote from his diaries.


In the eighties my dad met members of the Searle family who Orwell lodged with on Wallace Road at Parkwood Springs during the period he was researching "Road to Wigan Pier". They knew him as Eric Blair of course and my dad told me that Mrs Searle felt she'd been a bit misrepresented by Orwell in his diary as very working class when in fact she was a music teacher. I think her sons name was Gil Searle. I'm quoting from memory and my dad's no longer around to check with but I believe that titbit to be true. From Orwell's perspective, indeed any outsiders perspective, Sheffield must have seemed an absolute hellhole in the 1930's. My dad's memories of Parkwood Springs in the fifties and sixties sound bad enough when it was upwind of the gasworks, power station and whatever other manufacturies were lurking in the valley.

This is fascinating. I'm in the middle of rereading 'Wigan Pier'. I've always appreciated Orwell's reaction to Sheffield.