Sheffield Heritage Trail
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On top of all the sights and sounds that have survived from the past in the city centre, there are countless fascinating stories to discover in what has been preserved at various museums across Sheffield – whether your interest lies in industrial, social or natural history. Industrial history Social history Natural history More info Start with Kelham Island Museum for a Dating back to 1937, when it opened as Sheffield Nowhere in Sheffield is so packed with curiosities Kelham Island Museum / Shepherd Wheel / comprehensive account of the people and the City Museum and Mappin Art Gallery, Weston of nature as the Alfred Denny Museum. Primate Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet power behind Sheffield’s industrial progress. Park Museum traces a timeline of Sheffield’s skeletons grin in glass cabinets, amphibians simt.co.uk Be wowed by the mighty River Don Engine, social history as well as leading visitors on suspended in formaldehyde line the shelves, and learn about little mesters, buffer girls and expeditions into further flung parts of the world. fossils fill chests of drawers, and a cross- Hawley Collection women of steel. (Pay a visit to the women of Learn about the miners’ strike, Park Hill flats and sectioned dolphin sits on the windowsill. Named hawleytoolcollection.com steel statue in front of the City Hall too, and look the Great Sheffield Flood, before putting on a after the University of Sheffield’s first professor Metalwork Collection / Weston Park Museum out for surviving signs of little mesters in places furry coat and exploring the Arctic with Snowy of zoology, the museum dates back to 1905 but / Ruskin Collection like Arundel Street – these craftspeople tended the polar bear. Head uphill from the city centre only opened to the public in 2012, with tours on museums-sheffield.org.uk to work in small workshops around courtyards, in one direction to Manor Lodge, a 16th-century the first Saturday of each month. On rotating many of which have been converted into cafes, ruin surrounded by 20th-century houses, most display at Millennium Gallery, meanwhile, the Manor Lodge shops and galleries). The museum also houses famous as the place that held Mary Queen Ruskin Collection owes its existence to the sheffieldmanorlodge.org the impressive Hawley Collection, containing of Scots prisoner; in another direction, up at lofty social conviction of Victorian aesthete John Bishops’ House over 100,000 items from the city’s toolmaking Meersbrook Park, the timber-framed Bishops’ Ruskin. In 1875 Ruskin opened a museum in a bishopshouse.org.uk past. Head to the Metalwork Collection at House offers more insight into 16th-century cottage in the suburb of Walkley with the aim of Millennium Gallery for more shiny things – from Sheffield life. From its Norman bricks to its 1960s educating and inspiring Sheffield’s metalworkers Sheffield Cathedral old knives, forks and tableware marked “Made in tower, Sheffield Cathedral is full of stories that by showing them patterns, colours, textures sheffieldcathedral.org Sheffield” to a tureen shaped like a turtle, made reflect the evolution of the city, and has an array and sights of a wider world that they had no for serving up soup to fancy Victorians. Step of interactive displays to help you uncover them. other way of accessing. The collection features St Marie’s Cathedral even further back in time at Shepherd Wheel, Seek out the Catholic St Marie’s Cathedral too; colourful prints of exotic birds, glimmering stmariecathedral.org a grinding workshop that harnessed the power tucked away behind Fargate’s shops, it houses minerals, botanic illustrations, and much more. National Emergency Services Museum of the Porter Brook as early as the 16th century, rare 15th-century carvings of Christ. Meanwhile emergencymuseum.org.uk and Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, a unique the National Emergency Services Museum will and well-preserved 18th-century scythe-making let you in on the origins of the name “bobbies” as Alfred Denny Museum works and collection of workers’ cottages. well as allowing you to clamber into a bunch of sheffield.ac.uk/alfred-denny-museum old fire engines. Thanks to the members of Joined Sheffield is filled with objects, signs up Heritage Sheffield, in particular and places with fascinating stories Robin Hughes, David Price, Anna de Lange and Valerie Bayliss. And to tell of former lives – if you know to the members of Sheffield History Forum – a great resource for further where to look. Follow our hidden information on Sheffield’s heritage. heritage trail to discover just some of joinedupheritagesheffield.org.uk these sites in the city centre, like the sheffieldhistory.co.uk Words by Kat Hall, postbox that survived a suffragette’s design by John Gelder. bomb or the horse hospital turned birthplace of mushy peas. As well as the treasures that the city’s preserved down its side streets and on its buildings, this tour also makes a stop at the many museums and collections that plot the history of Sheffield from its roots to the present day. Look up, look around, listen. You never know what the past might be trying to tell you. Don’t miss Heritage Open Days each September – expect tours of everywhere from the birthplace of stainless steel cutlery to a sprawling Victorian SHEFFIELD cemetery to historic pubs. And delve deeper into the city’s past with a visit to Sheffield Archives. HERITAGE ourfaveplaces.co.uk @faveplaces TRAIL X West Bar Reminders of the past are scattered across Sheffield city centre. You might not notice them at first. They’re carved into the walls above high street chains. They’re marked into the columns that hold TRAM ROUTE t up concert halls. Some are tucked down quiet alleyways; others w e k r ne a keep lookout from the rooftops of civic buildings. po La am m C U y e a Lan ad H Bro u Police box v al Gang warfare was so rife in ak 1920s Sheffield that it earned e t a the city the nickname Little rg a Chicago. Chief constable F Percy Sillitoe (who would go am V on to head MI5) is widely St at y t t u S S es u credited with bringing an end W x rre f an y a to the gangs, and one way St e W h he cracked down on them S St was by installing a network of sion Divi 120 police boxes across the city – one of which still stands on Surrey Street. This green “Tardis” was used by officers to quickly report back to the station while on the beat and doubled up as a temporary cell in emergencies. v The Tory family’s carvings w Paradise Square yU Two Vulcans On first glance Sheffield’s high street appears fairly modern. Look This corner of the city centre Vulcan is the Roman god of above the shop signs on some of its buildings, though, and curious has a turbulent past that’s fire, metalworking, and the scenes emerge – many of which are the work of 19th/20th-century quite at odds with its peaceful forge. It’s no surprise, then, to stonemasonry family Frank Tory and his twin sons Alfred and name and pretty Georgian find more than one depiction William. The White Building in Fitzalan Square is decorated with demeanour. Originally ERII GR of him in the Steel City. On the the brothers’ depictions of the trades that made Sheffield famous. nicknamed Pot Square when top of the Town Hall is a neo- At the Central Library they carved symbols representing a variety it was a market for crockery, classical Vulcan – one foot on of disciplines (literature, music, drama, architecture, sculpture, Paradise Square became an anvil, a hammer and three painting, maths, chemistry, astronomy) around the entrance, a place of protest and arrows in his hands. The statue as well as a figure embodying knowledge acting as lookout. On sermonising in the 19th century, x Father and Daughter was made by Mario Raggi in East Parade you’ll find Frank’s beautiful lettering and portraits and was a regular meeting postboxes 1897, modelled on a member of of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Caxton above the entrance to place of the working-class Queen Victoria’s guardsmen in what was a printers’, now a bank. He even chiseled out the story of Chartist movement for political Next to the Town Hall on Surrey a style typical of the Victorian creation according to Genesis above what’s now HSBC on Fargate. reform. These meetings were Street stand a smart family of era. Looking down from the often unruly affairs – none postboxes: one dedicated to side of Castle House on Angel more so than in 1839 when the King George V, another to his Street, meanwhile, is a bold, crowd was dispersed by troops, daughter Queen Elizabeth II. In modernist Vulcan, also holding leading to a running battle and 1913, suffragette Molly Morris three arrows. Designed in 1962 a number of arrests. The square posted a bomb into George’s by Boris Tietze, this striking has also previously been home to draw attention to the version of the god is very much to a bawdy tavern and a campaign for votes for women. in keeping with Sheffield’s “House of Help for Friendless A detective at the scene confident 1960s outlook. Girls and Young Women”. apparently turned to Molly and blamed it on “the London lot”, finding it unimaginable that a nice young working class Sheffield woman like her would do this sort of thing. Plaques W Sewer gas destructor lamp X A hospital for horses Plaques dot the city centre’s walls and pavements, reminding Patented in 1895 by JE Webb, As you stand on Lady’s Bridge – the oldest bridge over the River perceptive passersby of celebrated lives and moments of Sheffield sewer gas destruction lamps Don in Sheffield, no less – look across at the fetching Royal past.