Why Did They Demolish So Much Of Attercliffe In The 1980s?

[crookedspire]

Sheffield's East End especially Attercliffe history has always interested me, probably down to the fact that Attercliffe has undergone so much change notability in the 1980s. Iv seen quite a few photos of the Attercliffe area before much was cleared away showing quite a few pubs, shops and churches and entire streets read on this Forum about people's memories of the area. Why did Sheffield Council decided to demolish so much of Attercliffe?

[muddycoffee]

I believe that in those years the planners wanted to improve the roads between the town centre and the M1 and Rotherham Links at Tinsley. There was a couple of schemes to upgrade the roads. Now we have the huge Brightside Lane - Meadowhall Road route, The Attercliffe Road route and the large cross route Hawke Janson St which joins up the Sheffield Outer Ring road with the two other routes I mentioned.

This has improved connectivity of the area.

 

I remember in the mid 1980s getting the Bus to Rotherham and Attercliffe road was narrow. It would never have coped with the traffic we see to meadowhall nowadays. When they built the Arena all the little shops were lost on that side of the road. No doubt there was lots of small houses in the location between the Arena, Don Valley Stadium, Meadowhall Retail part and Centertainment etc.

Edited March 8, 2015 by muddycoffee

[Jim117]

Dunno, they did the same with Heeley and replaced the housing they'd demolished with bugger all. There's a guy done a photo sequence showing then and now pics of Sheffield on youtube and it's amazing how many of the now pics are just scrubland.

[muddycoffee]

Dunno, they did the same with Heeley and replaced the housing they'd demolished with bugger all. There's a guy done a photo sequence showing then and now pics of Sheffield on youtube and it's amazing how many of the now pics are just scrubland.

 

Not the same as Heeley.

Heeley was full of back to back housing that had to go because of how outdated it was. They cleared a swathe of land for the Heeley Bypass, but that didn't get built due to successful protests. We still have a strip of grass where the bypass should be with the Heeley City Farm plonked in the middle of a main Junction.

[Jim117]

Hi MC, I lived at Heeley as a kid and our house was subject to a CPO and demolished. IIRC most houses were'nt back to back but of the shared yard and outside bog variety, some of which still exist and have been done up with bathrooms,etc. My beef with this is that many hundreds of homes were demolished and not replaced.

[muddycoffee]

Sorry Jim I got the detail of the Housing Type Wrong. I thought they were all Back to Backs. However transport schemes like this are devastating to communities. Just the same as the new issue about the 49 houses they are going to demolish for HS2 at Tinsley. A whole road swallowed up. I feel really sorry for the people who own those houses as overnight they have lost the majority of their value and are now unsellable.

 

Wallbuilder once told me that the same road scheme would have caused devastation over near the Abbey Glen Laundry where a large roundabout was to be installed. Loads of houses would have been demolished and some kind of awful flyover over the railway.

Edited March 8, 2015 by muddycoffee

[Blackbeard]

The then government set up the Sheffield Development Corporation to oversea the regeneration of the Lower Don Valley, it was nothing to do with the City council and was its own planning authority. It ran from 1988 to 1997

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_Development_Corporation

Edited March 8, 2015 by Blackbeard

[Alan Ladd]

In the period prior to the first world war Attercliffe, starting from Staniforth Road and down to Carbrook School, was, according to my grandfather, one of the busiest shopping areas in Europe.

 

In my own lifetime I remember Banners being a very important department store, at least six cinemas, the Palace Music Hall/Theatre, more pubs an clubs than I can count and a very well established community.

 

Whatever the plans of the council, they failed.

[crookedspire]

I recently brought a booklet by John Darwin called ' Sheffield in Transition ' showing different areas of Attercliffe in colour photos during the mid 1980s . Also on Sheffield History Forum there's thread about Attercliffe in the 80s called ' Urban Provision ' again with colour photos and a few black and white ones its hard to believe that the area could have rivaled Hillsborough in its time and when I pass though it now its so dead and lifeless though that chip shop down there great.

[Plain Talker]

Dunno, they did the same with Heeley and replaced the housing they'd demolished with bugger all. There's a guy done a photo sequence showing then and now pics of Sheffield on youtube and it's amazing how many of the now pics are just scrubland.

 

The clearances at Heeley were for a bypass that was intended to relieve the sheaf valley, but never materialised.

 

---------- Post added 09-03-2015 at 13:27 ----------

 

Hi MC, I lived at Heeley as a kid and our house was subject to a CPO and demolished. IIRC most houses were'nt back to back but of the shared yard and outside bog variety, some of which still exist and have been done up with bathrooms,etc. My beef with this is that many hundreds of homes were demolished and not replaced.

 

I have the same argument about the clearances of other areas, such as Highfields, the houses were perfectly okay, it was just that they lacked indoor bathrooms and toilets. At the time my family home was "cleared" in 1979, just off London Road, the council could have done what was called an enveloping scheme, and put bathrooms in, very inexpensively, and made lovely family homes.

 

Instead, the close communities in those areas were decimated, and scattered to the four winds.

 

My family and three of my aunts who lived on the same street, were dispersed, variously, to Arbourthorne, Greenhill, Winn Gardens and Longley... other neighbours went to Abbeydale, Lansdowne, and Arbourthorne.

 

The heart was ripped out of the communities that were cleared.

 

---------- Post added 09-03-2015 at 13:42 ----------

 

Hi MC, I lived at Heeley as a kid and our house was subject to a CPO and demolished. IIRC most houses were'nt back to back but of the shared yard and outside bog variety, some of which still exist and have been done up with bathrooms,etc. My beef with this is that many hundreds of homes were demolished and not replaced.

 

I had aunts who lived by "Taggy's Field," at Heeley. Their houses were part of the clearances for the defunct bypass.

My aunt Maureen and uncle Tony lived on Sturge Street, now Sturge Croft, and another aunt lived on the corner of either Alexandra or Richards Road, a house that is now part of Heeley City Farm. She moved to Heeley green, to the new houses.

Their houses were the typical two-up-two-down mid-Victorian terraced houses. I believe there were some "back-to-back" properties lower down, nearer london road/ chesterfield road, but most were the terraces.