Do you remember how mucky Sheffield was before the clean air act?

[Young Wilf]

Don't forget the blue smoke blown out into Fargate from the coffee being roasted at Arthur Davy's.

 

The smell of coffee roasting still takes me back.

[Cookingfat]

yes i lived in pitsmoor near christ church and many days you couldnt see in to town from there. windows were always black as were buildings and itt was only a matter of months when you started seeing a difference, best thing this city ever did

[Janner]

Don't forget the blue smoke blown out into Fargate from the coffee being roasted at Arthur Davy's.

 

The smell of coffee roasting still takes me back.

 

The only coffee I was used to was the bottled Camp coffee, When I was young Sheffield had not entered the Coffee Bean Age.

[sand_dollars]

you know wat tha siad wers the muck this money

 

where theres muck theres brass

[Derek Clayton]

Yes, I remember going shopping to Sheffield on Saturdays as a young child, every building was Jet Black. The air was so thick with the soot, your nice white shirt woud be black by the time you got home. It makes you wonder how us baby boomers survived, we ate fatty foods like greasy bacon, dripping sandwiches, suet dumplings, lots of chips with lashings of salt and vinegar, breathed in foul air, most people smoked ( not me ), and yet here we are, still alive and healthy. Plus we got bashed by teachers and parents if we did wrong, how did we make it?

[Harleyman]

It was so mucky that a year after we bought the new TV it had to go back to the shop to have the glass in front of the screen removed so that the screen could be cleaned.

 

I lived for 15 years in that muck and yet all these years later I'm still breathing and absolutely no respitory problems either. Oh aye mate... lungs of cast iron !!!

[frankbaldock]

I remember as a Star reporter writing about the "mystery" of lace curtains suddenly falling apart and ladies' nylons suddenly disintegrating in tatters.

 

The cause, it turned out, was the constant sulphuric and nitric acids in the air -- attacking everything -- curtains, clothes, lungs and buildings everywhere. The airborne acids from the works were just one part of the dust, soot and other nasty particles that blackened our city. Never mind the emissions from coal fires!

 

Thank god for today's clean air, open views and a city that now fits its beautiful frame like a pretty picture. The view from Wincobank Hill was always nostalgic but it was clean after Thatcher killed the steelworks. It looked like an elephants' graveyard with the roofs off the abandoned works all the way to Rotherham (to avoid taxes because the works were then no longer considered buildings).

 

Frank Baldock