Anyone have any memories of the area where Meadowhall now stands before it was a shopping centre (and don't say rubble...) Did people live in the area or was it all foundries and works ?

it was mostly steel works ete , big improvment dont u think.

dont know, suits people from outside sheffield cos its easy to get to, but as in previous threads, means the heart of sheffield is missing in my opinion!

Originally posted by some_boy
dont know, suits people from outside sheffield cos its easy to get to, but as in previous threads, means the heart of sheffield is missing in my opinion! Any nostalgia for that area of Sheffield is not for me. Living amongst filthy steelworks, no inside bath or toilet in tiny houses. Much prefer a shower every morning and clean air. let someone in China or Siberia have all the s... is what I say.
Gonna get the profesional workers on now I suppose Maggy this blah blah, Scargill that, I loved goint darn pit I did its all bo....s cos they never worked much anyway if truth be known.


Dragon

The death of the city centre isn't all Meadowhall's fault, it's largely down to the Council's idiotic anti-car policies.

Is it any wonder people prefer to go down to Meadowhall when there's next to NO parking in Town?! And not everyone has easy access to buses, like us in Stannington for example, we get 2 buses that run every half hour and that's it, 1 bus only on sundays and bank holidays :loopy:

I think Hadfields rolling mill was on part of the site.
The bronze steel workers on what I think is Market Street in the shopping center are a simble of it's past useage.

Originally posted by dragonsoup

Gonna get the profesional workers on now I suppose Maggy this blah blah, Scargill that, I loved goint darn pit I did its all bo....s cos they never worked much anyway if truth be known.
Dragon



Congratulations Dragon !!

That must be the most puerile remark I've seen on this board :loopy:

Hi

Have found a description of the steel works that were there before Meadowhall was built :

http://www.made-in-sheffield.com/People/RobHadfield.htm

Whilst trying to find something about this I stumbled across a right funny page on the BBC website showing the day in the life of some poor bloked who has been dragged to Meadowhell :P

http://www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire/sense_of_place/meadowhall/sean.shtml

I have a vague memory of the meadowhall site pre-meadowhall; It was just huge steelworks factory buildings, with massive metal pipes running alongside Barrow Road behind the wall - vaguely remember there being quite a few of various sizes and they ran the length of barrow road from the pub at the bottom of newman road all the way to the bridge. we live on newman road when i was a kid (late 60s early 70s) and i remember hearing the hissing noises from the steel works and wondering what the hell it was!! would imagine there would be pics in one of the history books about the area somewhere?
sue:D

Int it strange how a new building appears and a few years down the line you can`t remember what was there before ?:thumbsup:

My Grandfather, Charles William Owen was a roll turner at Hadfields for 50 years [began at 13 years of age], and his work bench was exactly where the bronze workers are positioned at Meadowhall. Was Meadowhall a good thing? There is no absolute answer to the question. On the one hand, Hadfields and other firms could not compete with foreign steel, but there are those who will argue that the Thatcher administration invested in foreign industry whilst allowing Sheffield's to crumble. Others of a conservative persuasion might argue that it is not the place of the state to intervene/ meddle regarding business/ industry. There are many variables here to look at, and a previous contributor referred to the council's anti-car policies re Meadowhall's impact on the city centre. I believe he/she is correct here. Similarly, the same idiotic policies are in place in Southport [where I now live], with the result that people from nearby areas simply shop at the huge Trafford Centre instead. It is ultimately down to subjective opinion, and mine is that places like Meadowhall are sterile, characterless and vulgar. They are part of what the Sociologist, George Ritzer calls, "The McDonaldisation of Society"- whereby everything is becoming rationalised, predictable, "dumbed down", and in bite-sized chunks. On the other hand, I don't envy Grandad's half a century in the rolling mills...

I worked in't mill but seeing the turners making rolls for us to do our work was art in it's own.

Kind words, Trekker. My Grandad would appreciate them.

I'm sure I attended a car auction on the land where meadowhall is many years ago.

Originally posted by rtapper
Hi

Whilst trying to find something about this I stumbled across a right funny page on the BBC website showing the day in the life of some poor bloked who has been dragged to Meadowhell :P

http://www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire/sense_of_place/meadowhall/sean.shtml

:D :D :D :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
How so very true. I had some friends around over the weekend, we went to meadowhall on saturday, for seeing the female form ;) it was good, but lost one of my friends in there had to make him look for shops to try and direct him back! :D :rolleyes:

Originally posted by timo
Kind words, Trekker. My Grandad would appreciate them.

Thank's timo, skills r a thing of the past?

Thanks Timo - that's exactly what I was after. Any other memories of the area before the bulldozer ?

Originally posted by Lickszz
I'm sure I attended a car auction on the land where meadowhall is many years ago.

There was definetly a car scrap yard down there.

It's a pleasure, Wickoboy. Yes, I do have other memories of what existed before Meadowhall aside from Hadfields' East Hecla Works. The previous contributor is right, there was a scrap-yard, though who owned it I don't know. To be honest, the area was bleak and largely full of steel firms. Why not consult the books published by The Star newspaper,Images of Sheffield and More Images of Sheffield? In the former, there are some excellent photos which may be of interest to you, showing lads of the East Hecla in the 1930s, scenes from the BSC strike outside Hadfields on Vulcan Road in 1980, and an aerial shot from 1949 showing the East End works of Sanderson Bros and Newbould, Cammell's works in Carlisle Street, and Newhall School etc. My Grandma was born in Newhall Road, incidentally, right in the middle of the area notoriously associated with the Cellar-Grate Gang [so-called because they would use such objects to batter enemies with] of the Sheffield Gang Wars. I'm a mere 43 years of age, and I'm sure that there are older people with much better memories of the area than mine.
Regarding the hilariously childish comments of Dragonsoup; I am not part of the "Good old days" brigade. I am , however, grateful for the opportunities and privileges I have enjoyed that were denied my Sheffield Grandparents. I earn my living teaching a subject I love in a University. My Grandfather, probably much brighter than I am, had no choice but to work long and hard at a job that would cripple me physically, and kill my spirit. He was part of a marvellous generation worth a million times more than than the disrespectful, cowardly Dragonsoup. Incidentally, Dragonslop, I have no admiration for the likes of Scargill just a RESPECT for the sacrifices made by previous generations.

I teach Geography myself, hence the interest in the area and how it has changed over the years.
Thanks for the extra detail. The Cellar Grate Gang sound good! I'll have to hunt out the Star books.
As my granny used to say (allegedly) "the closest you get to being in space is when you're wiping your a**e on a 'Star'"

No problem, Wicko-boy. You should be able to get hold of them. If not, send me a private email and I'll photocopy the relevant pages for you.
The Cellar-Grate Gang, according to my Grandma, were heavily involved with protection rackets involving local shops and pubs, inter-gang violence, dog-fighting and general rake-helly mayhem. Amusingly, whenever my young mates and I would drop by to see her at her Wincobank home [Fife Street], she would invariably cower in mock-terror exclaiming, "Good God Charlie! It's the Cellar-Grate Gang!" I wonder if there are any descendants of those early gangs living in Sheffield? I have met, by accident, the great grandson of the famous Inspector Shillitoe sent down from Glasgow to sort out the gangs. He runs an Interior Design shop in Southport, where my wife and I now live...

Originally posted by jan2002
Int it strange how a new building appears and a few years down the line you can`t remember what was there before ?:thumbsup:

Now that is so true!

There was a car auction site there for many years just prior to it being built. People may dislike Meadowhall but without that whole area would have been a wasteland.

Interesting comment re "wasteland", Internetowl. Tell me, have you ever read T.S.Eliot?...

Wicko_boy I live near the school on Newman Road (I don't live on Newman though) and there is still a scrapyard (only a small one though) on Barrow Road just at the side of Meadowhall. I remember Hadfields on Vulcan Road and there being a strike but mainly remember most of the area being derelict until Meadowhall was built.

When I was a young teenager (1951-1953), on dreary Sunday afternoons I used to explore Sheffield by tram. One of the most fascinating routes was Fitzalan Square, the Wicker, Brightside Lane, Weedon Street, and back to town via Attercliffe.

I can remember on Brightside Lane and Weedon Street it was like riding down in the bottom of a canyon with the steelworks towering on either side of the road, and even from the top deck of a tram there was little view of the sky.

My most lasting impression is that everything was black...from the smoke, dust and grime. Stonework, brickwork and lots of corrugated iron all the same colour; even on a bright sunny day it was pretty depressing. A marked contrast to my favourite tram route, - the Abbey Lane circular.

I was a bit of a tram geek in those days, - kept a record of all the routes I'd done with dates,tram numbers etc, ...but the 'monkey run' took over before I'd travelled all the routes ;)

Incidentally, some of the lads in my form at school lived down the 'Cliffe and I remember one of them once being pretty upset beacasue his Dad was seriuosly ill in hospital after being "grated" in a fight. I had in my ignorance to ask what he meant by "grated"...never realised there was a handy weapon outside most front doors in those days.

Edit - thought I'd better move that comma before you-know-who noticed it.
:rolleyes:

Originally posted by Trekker
I worked in't mill but seeing the turners making rolls for us to do our work was art in it's own.

The whole firm would depend on the skill of the roll turners.

I worked in a mill in the late 70s. We rolled down to 5mm rod from 4 inch square billet through, I think, 10 sets of rolls (conti-loop system) and at 5mm the rod was going into the coiler at about 90 mph ! We rolled a lot of stainless and high speed tool steel which needed to be very accurately rounded and sized. Used to get some spectacular "cobbles" with red-hot spaghetti flying in all directions and everyone running for cover :D

ISTR the rolls were bought in three-quarter finished and the roll turners brought them down to final size. Strange to look back and appreciate that was one of the most satisying jobs I had, - good to see the results of your labour going out the gates on the back of a lorry every day.

Hello Greybeard. Very interesting snippet re "grating". Let's bring it back for certain disrespectful contributors!

Originally posted by timo
Hello Greybeard. Very interesting snippet re "grating". Let's bring it back for certain disrespectful contributors!

As the daughter, and granddaughter of steelworking men, and of Atterclevians...
(I am a steelworkers daughter, and proud of my heritage:- I also was the ex daughter in law of a steelworks employee, and Mr pt is the son of a steelman, too)

I remember the "cellar grate chucking competitions", usually of a sunday, or a weekday evening, (usually payday..) when the hubby had not arrived home at the expected time. forcing the wife to go trekking the breadth and length of attercliffe commomn and it's environs, to locate the errant husband.

Re:- Meadowhall; yes, Dunford-Hadfields was the massive steelworks which occupied the Meadowhall site prior to the shopping mall/temple to mammon... ;)

PT

Your contribution made me smile, Plain talker. You are right to be proud of your heritage too. I often think that steel workers are overlooked when it comes to historical/ sociological material on working class culture, in comparison to, say, the miners. Not that I mean any disrespect to miners, but steelworkers are just as worthy of academic investigation. They too, as you will be very much aware, had their own, distinct, cultural norms and values etc. I am glad that there is a respectful monument to men like my Grandfather at Meadowhall, who toiled hard to make the finest steel on this planet. Also worth remembering is their great contribution to the War effort. Pacifists may reel at what I am about to declare, but I am proud to say that my Grandfather and his colleagues supplied the RAF with the bombs they required to defeat Hitler. This is so often forgotten or overlooked nowadays.When my Grandfather first saw Meadowhall [in all its ineffable glory], he wept. What he would think of our 21st Century, "postmodern", "multicultural", relativistic New Britain where the Service sector has overtaken all others, and people actually take holidays [checking in to nearby hotels] devoted to week-long shopping at these huge, indoor complexes, I am better off not knowing. Whenever I hear of a new one mushrooming somewhere in the country, a terrible dread is born.

Originally posted by timo
Your contribution made me smile, Plain talker. You are right to be proud of your heritage too. I often think that steel workers are overlooked when it comes to historical/ sociological material on working class culture, in comparison to, say, the miners. Not that I mean any disrespect to miners, but steelworkers are just as worthy of academic investigation. They too, as you will be very much aware, had their own, distinct, cultural norms and values etc. I am glad that there is a respectful monument to men like my Grandfather at Meadowhall, who toiled hard to make the finest steel on this planet. Also worth remembering is their great contribution to the War effort. Pacifists may reel at what I am about to declare, but I am proud to say that my Grandfather and his colleagues supplied the RAF with the bombs they required to defeat Hitler. This is so often forgotten or overlooked nowadays.When my Grandfather first saw Meadowhall [in all its ineffable glory], he wept. What he would think of our 21st Century, "postmodern", "multicultural", relativistic New Britain where the Service sector has overtaken all others, and people actually take holidays [checking in to nearby hotels] devoted to week-long shopping at these huge, indoor complexes, I am better off not knowing. Whenever I hear of a new one mushrooming somewhere in the country, a terrible dread is born.

Thank you for your encouragement, timo.

I want to write a history of my family, for my lad and my grandbabies, so that this heritage is not lost forever, as I fear it will be.

I, like you, feel that it is complete, total and utter desecration, when the magnificent, massive, world-reknowned steelworks that we had in sheffield is replaced by a temple to mammon such as "Mad-as-Hell" (as it is called in our family).

what was done to more than decimate our steel and mining and cultery industries was iniquitous!

PT

My dad worked at Steel, Peech and Tozer's - now the Magna museum. What are people's views on 'heritage tourism' of this kind: turning old pits, forges and pumping stations into tourist attractions. Is it better than shops ? At least some of the people who work in these places used to work in them when they were still in operation. Or is this all part of the move from Sheffield being an 'industrial' city to being a 'post-industrial' one: inevitable.

Some great contributions in this thread from (nearly) all concerned. This is what makes the SF so valuable. Local knowledge like this is absolutely priceless! :thumbsup:

Hello Plain Talker, re your comments; it is a pleasure. To Mojoworking, thankyou for your kind words.
Re the "inevitable" move towards post-industrialism wicko-boy refers to; yes, I think it was inevitable. Worse still, we are moving towards a society in which performativity plays a huge role. In our "information society", the only knowledge seen as worth preserving is that which has a utilitarian purpose. Hence the "dumbing down" of academic courses [modularisation of Degrees, over-emphasis on "learning outcomes" etc].

What do I think of Heritage tours? It depends how they are done. Most I've seen are vulgar, and pitched at cretin-level. They must be conducted with a degree of respect, as, in the spirit of Burke and Salisbury, I strongly believe that we have a duty to past generations. Unfortunately, to make money, it is seen as necessary to turn everything into an "Experience" in bite-sized chunks. What next, " Have a family fun day out as destitute former agricultural labourers in mid- 19th century Suffolk", "Welcome to Rickets World!", or " Live the Diptheria Experience: a great day out in epidemic- ravaged 1920's Brightside!" ?

Timo,

Talking of heritage...

I've been doing my family history for a while now. In the following list Samuel is my direct ancestor, George and Henry his brothers, and Benjamin a first cousin.

A DIRECTORY OF THE BOROUGH AND PARISH OF SHEFFIELD, 1852
Xxxxxx Benjamin mark, letter, figure, &c. maker,
Xxxxxx George steel refiner,
Xxxxxx Henry, steel refiner,
Xxxxxx Samuel steel manufacturer,

One of my brothers worked his way up from apprentice to management at Hadfield's. My Dad was at Laycock Engineering, grandfather at ST&P most of his working life, and my gt.grandfather (son of the Samuel above), the same with Flather's Bright Steels.

When I returned to Sheffield in 1976 I was really quite chuffed to get a job in the steel industry.

Greybeard, good for you! Your ancestor must have been an impressive man indeed.