Can Anybody Ever Remember The Smog In Sheffield?

[rhodesian11]

wasn't rusty nails also in some ron jeremy films?

 

are you sure about that

[Johnsworld]

I was brought up in Tinsley late 50's through to late 60's.

We were always in a smog, with Templeborough Rolling Mill down the road pushing out the orange dust from it's furnaces.

[rhodesian11]

Smog I remember it well in the 60s dirty filthy place

[Alan Ladd]

I remember driving from Doncaster to Sheffield through Conisbrough, Mexborough etc, and the smog was so thick I had the drivers side door open and was looking for the white lines! Would be about 1965.

[westmoors]

I 1948 -1950 used to cycle to work from Bradway right down the valley in bright sunshine but once through the Wicker arch you went into a yellow fug and stayed in it until you retraced your route after work.

[TORONTONY]

Thanks for that. I've just taken a look.

I'm not disputing there was pollution. Smoke from the factories I do remember.

I don't, however, remember "smog" as described by some people on here.

My memories of that era were long hot summers, playing outdoors all day either on the hills behind Liversey street above wardsend cemetry, or up Rivelin valley.

 

You obviously never lived on the strip, i.e. the road between Sheffield and Rotherham and all surrounding areas 50's & 60's I worked in the thick of it in Tinsley from 1960 to 1969 and it was bad, all year round. However things improved when the City went smokeless and steelworks started closing after the nationalisation fiasco. Trouble is everybody drives now so pollution is coming back in car emissions all around the world.

[Aussie man]

I used to work on the Moor and one evening in about 1963 when I was walking home on the same journey I had made many times the smog was so thick I had to look at the name of every street as I made my way to Sharrow Lane, even had trouble seeing the name of the street on the building, You could literally not see more than 8 feet in front of you, what cars were on the road were driving with the driver door open to see the white line and someone walking in front of the car.

[Bald Eagle]

I can remember the smogs very well. Thick yellow stuff. In fact still got stinging eyes from the pollution walking in to work at Blackburn Meadows power station in the 1970's!!!!

[soft ayperth]

It wasn't just the lack of visibility that was associated with the smog. It was the smell as well. You could smell the place every time you went on a trip to the seaside as you approached Sheffield. Once sensitized to it, you didn't notice it anymore. My recollection is that the smog was at its worst in the late 40s and 50s. I'm 72 so I have no recollections prior to then.

[TORONTONY]

It wasn't just the lack of visibility that was associated with the smog. It was the smell as well. You could smell the place every time you went on a trip to the seaside as you approached Sheffield. Once sensitized to it, you didn't notice it anymore. My recollection is that the smog was at its worst in the late 40s and 50s. I'm 72 so I have no recollections prior to then.

 

You could be right, I am 70 myself, but lived just outside the zone in Brinsworth, but I worked in Tinsley throughout the 60's and it was not nice at all and according to older employees, it used to be worse years earlier. I did live at Catcliffe up to being 12 or 13, and The stink of Orgreave coke ovens, stayed with you 24 hours a day, not so much smog though, mainly fog off the Rother, oh and of course the floods, but that is another story.