Sheffield Property In The News

[Jeffrey Shaw 90]

See last Saturday's TIMES https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/standing-at-skys-edge-what-its-really-like-to-live-in-the-park-hill-flats-in-sheffield-2l36cj8q0

There's a very positive two-page feature about Park Hill flats and Sky's Edge.

NB: it's behind a  paywall for non-subscribers.

[prince al 178]

Excellent.

[Findlay 116]

Standing at Sky’s Edge: what it’s really like to live in the Park Hill flats in Sheffield

As the musical inspired by the housing estate hits the West End next month, Jayne Dowle speaks to the residents to find out all about life there.

Sheffield’s Park Hill estate has inspired a musical that opens in the West End next month
Friday January 26 2024, 12.04am, The Sunday Times
When Standing at the Sky’s Edge, the award-winning musical inspired by the Park Hill flats in Sheffield, hits the West End next month, they’ll be raising a cocktail or two in the local pub. Perhaps a Mid-Century Martini (Tanqueray No 10 gin, British coconut cream and fig leaf)? Or a Dizzy New Heights (with Brugal rum, spent coffee and Bullion chocolate, made by an artisan chocolatier in nearby Neepsend)? With funky bubble lighting, original concrete walls softened by pink upholstery and cocktails at £9 a pop, the Pearl at Park Hill is as cool a hangout as any in the city. Opened in September last year by the local entrepreneurs Jack Wakelin and Tom “Ronnie” Aronica, it’s the latest addition to the once-notorious 1960s housing estate that is now more famous than infamous.

Standing at the Sky’s Edge follows the fortunes of a single flat at Park Hill — starting in the 1960s, when it’s the home of the newlywed Rose and her steelworker husband, Harry, followed by a group of Liberian immigrants, and finally Poppy, a middle-class Londoner fleeing a failed same-sex relationship — exploring six decades of seismic social change along the way. The musical opened in Sheffield at the Crucible Theatre in 2019, then transferred to the National Theatre in London in February last year where it won two Olivier awards: best new musical and best original score. 

Last month Standing at the Sky’s Edge became the first theatrical production to be awarded the “Made in Sheffield” trademark, a maker’s mark related to the city’s steel and cutlery manufacturing industry. The musical’s diversity definitely reflects Park Hill today, says Naomi Lopez-Iglesias, a 60-year-old homeowner, sitting outside South Street Kitchen, a licensed two-storey café serving Middle Eastern-inspired, plant-based dishes. Inside, on this wintry Thursday afternoon, the café’s windows are steaming; there’s not a seat to be had downstairs. Upstairs, the local chapter of the Wildlife Trust is holding a lively meeting. 

“This isn’t a gated community full of yuppies; there are 96 social housing flats with more earmarked for the new phases,” says Lopez-Iglesias, a former vintage clothes dealer. She moved here 18 months ago, downsizing from a Victorian property in the southwest Sheffield suburb of Nether Edge to a one-bedroom flat. “There are folk with second homes living alongside the working poor, retired folk, students, long-term renters. Creative businesses are based here; the diversity and mix of people makes it an interesting place to live. It’s my forever home and I love it.” Park Hill is believed to be the largest grade II* listed building in Europe.

Unlike many city-centre housing developments, Park Hill does not discriminate in favour of the young. Carol Grantham, 65, a painter and decorator who lives in Streatham, south London, bought a two-bedroom flat for £185,000 in 2021, so that she and her husband, Nigel, 70, can easily visit their daughter, who lives in Sheffield with her husband and their five-year-old grandson. “We didn’t want to live in a retirement-type place, we wanted to live somewhere a bit more funky,” Grantham says. “Here we have three cinemas, theatres, all the restaurants and shops within a seven to ten-minute walk. One of the things we really like is that it’s so quick to get into the countryside. We can be in the Peak District in 15 minutes, Manchester in less than an hour, at the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield in about 45 minutes.”