The 1950s and 1960s saw the construction of numerous brutalist apartment blocks in Sheffield, England. The Sheffield City Council had been clearing inner-city residential slums since the early 1900s. Prior to the 1950s these slums were replaced with low-rise council housing, mostly constructed in new estates on the edge of the city. By the mid-1950s the establishment of a green belt had led to a shortage of available land on the edges of the city, whilst the government increased subsidies for the construction of high-rise apartment towers on former slum land, so the council began to construct high-rise inner city estates, adopting modernist designs and industrialised construction techniques, culminating in the construction of the award-winning Gleadless Valley and Park Hill estates.
Map of major developments, 1955–1970
Key: = Existing development = Partially existing development (some blocks demolished) = Demolished development XX = Mouse over two-letter code for development name; click for link to section in this article.
Timeline of development
Existing developments Callow Mount
Callow Mount, also known as Gleadless Valley (Rollestone), is a complex of six residential tower blocks that was completed in 1964, as part of the wider Gleadless Valley Redevelopment Area which also includes the Gleadless Valley and Herdings Twin Towers developments as well as a wide expanse of low-rise council housing. Callow Mount is located on the western side of the head of Blackstock Road at its junction with the B6388 Gleadless Road, opposite the Newfield Green shopping area towards the northern end of the Gleadless Valley development area. The Callow Mount complex was constructed by M J Gleeson on behalf of Sheffield City Council.
One of the tower blocks at Callow Mount, named Callow, has fifteen floors containing 56 two-bedroom apartments, rising to a height of . The remaining five towers, named Bankwood, Handbank, Newfield, Parkfield and Pemberton, each have thirteen floors, containing 48 one-bedroom apartments and rising to heights of . Each block consists of a non-residential ground floor, housing a laundry area and other communal facilities. Additionally, Callow houses the boiler rooms and other facilities for the district heating system which covers the entire Callow Mount complex in its ground floor and an adjacent single-story annexe; as a result, it differs visually from the other towers in having three metal chimneys attached to its northern facade.
The addresses of the six towers are as follows: Bankwood: 1–95 Callow Mount Callow: 1–111 Callow Place Handbank: 98–192 Callow Mount Newfield: 97–191 Callow Drive Parkfield: 1–95 Callow Drive Pemberton: 2–96 Callow Road
All six towers remain in operation as council housing directly operated by Sheffield City Council. However, Handbank is now reserved for residents over the State Pension age. A refurbishment project covering the entire complex was carried out in 2010–2011; as part of the project, the towers received new, predominantly green cladding. The design of the cladding additionally incorporates a uniquely coloured stripe in the facade of each face and around the rooftop to identify each building; Bankwood is light green, Callow is turquoise, Handbank is orange, Newfield is dark green, Parkfield is blue, and Pemberton is red. This colour scheme had already been in place around the doorways of each tower since construction, although the refurbishment made it much more prominent.
Gleadless Valley
The Gleadless Valley project is an expansive complex of 36 six-storey tower blocks (of which 22 still exist) located throughout the wider Gleadless Valley Redevelopment Area, between the related Callow Mount and Herdings Twin Towers developments. The Gleadless Valley blocks were completed between 1955 and 1962 by a consortium consisting of H. Dernie Construction and direct municipal labour groups belonging to what was then the Sheffield County Borough Council. The blocks of flats are located quite widely across the development area, with a ring of them lining the outer side of Blackstock Road (four blocks), Gaunt Road (13) and Ironside Road (11) while the inner sides and areas confined by these three roads are largely covered by low-rise housing. An additional row of eight largely identical blocks were constructed away on Raeburn Road, next to Herdings Park. Each block is largely identical inside, containing twelve dwellings for a total of 432 residencies across the complex as-built.
This area of the Gleadless Valley, particularly along Blackstock Road, is very steeply-sloping on the western side of the valley of the Meers Brook. Indeed, Sheffield City Council had initially marked this area as unsuitable for development. Despite the Gleadless Valley already being within the borders of Sheffield, the council instead pursued the purchase of flatter land in neighbouring North East Derbyshire for development; when permission for this was rejected by the central government, the council instead began development of this section of the Gleadless Valley as a last resort. Incidentally, the area of rural Derbyshire initially earmarked for development would later be ceded to South Yorkshire and developed as the Mosborough Townships in the 1990s.
The steep terrain of the Gleadless Valley presented a considerable challenge for the development consortium to overcome, especially since the council were pushing for development of dense high-rise social housing. As a result, a unique design was used in the construction of most of these buildings, designed by city architect J. L. Womersley. They are set back on average around from the side of the road, part way down the hillside; a flat bridge from road level leads directly into the third floor in the middle of the building, with staircases up to the upper floors and down to the lower floors. The only exception to this were seven of the eight Raeburn Road blocks, which were constructed on flat enough land to allow a conventional ground-level entrance and central staircase upwards to all six floors.
Following the completion of the Gleadless Valley development, which also included surrounding low-rise housing, the buildings were described as state-of-the-art and the jewel in the crown of the local council for their unusual construction. During the 1960s and 1970s, the estate won many national and international awards; however, by the start of the 2000s, the area had become one of the most deprived areas of the city and within the 10% most deprived areas of the country. The Gleadless Valley Tenants and Residents Association (GV-TARA) was founded in the 2010s to further the interests of the area.
The thirteen blocks of this style located alongside Gaunt Road, plus the sole Raeburn Road block that contained a bridge, were demolished between 2002 and 2005. As of June 2020, the sites of these buildings remain unoccupied. The other 22 blocks remain in use as council housing operated directly by Sheffield City Council. In September 2017, the council opened a consultation regarding the future of the estate. This resulted in the unveiling of a local master plan in late 2018, which received £500,000 in central government funding for the refurbishment of the Gleadless Valley blocks of flats in early 2019.
Hanover House
Hanover House (simply Hanover when first built) is a single block of flats located on Exeter Drive, just off the A61 Hanover Way dual-carriageway which nowadays is part of the Sheffield Inner Ring Road. Construction of Hanover House was carried out by M J Gleeson on behalf of the Sheffield City Council and commenced in 1965, completed in 1966. The single tower consists of 16 floors, all of them residential, containing a total of 126 residencies and rising to a height of . The flats within Hanover House are addressed 101–349 Exeter Drive.
Nine blocks of five-storey maisonette-style council housing were built on the roads surrounding Hanover House the same time; additionally, the Hanover development was located a short distance from the now-demolished Broomhall complex on the opposite side of the inner ring road. The original exterior design of Hanover House consisted of exposed concrete accented with metal panes painted yellow. As part of a refurbishment of the tower, this was replaced in 2009 by green and grey plastic cladding covering the entire structure. The maisonettes surrounding Hanover House were refurbished around the same time, with external concrete panels being repainted blue, green, orange, red, maroon, lilac or terracotta to differentiate each block.
The design of retrofitted cladding was strongly implicated in the devastatingly rapid spread of the Grenfell Tower fire which killed 72 people in a similarly-designed tower block in London in June 2017. As a result, safety inspections were carried out on all tower blocks across the country which had been retrofitted with replacement cladding. The cladding applied to Hanover House was the only tower block cladding in Sheffield that failed fire safety tests, and it was subsequently confirmed by Sheffield City Council that it would be removed. Removal of the cladding commenced in July 2017 and was completed by the end of the year. Replacement cladding, identical in visual design but now passing fire safety tests, was applied to the building from April 2019 onwards, restoring Hanover House to its pre-Grenfell appearance by the start of 2020.
Herdings Twin Towers
The Herdings complex, also known as Gleadless Valley (Herdings), is located on Raeburn Place adjacent to Herdings Park at the southern end of the Gleadless Valley Redevelopment Area, which also included the Callow Mount and Gleadless Valley schemes. Construction of the Herdings towers commenced in 1958 and was completed in 1959. Construction was carried out by Tersons Ltd., who later became part of the British Insulated Callender's Cables company, on behalf of the Sheffield City Council.
When built, there were three towers on this site, named Leighton, Morland and Raeburn and receiving the nickname The Three Sisters due to their prominent location on a hill overlooking the city. However, Raeburn had been constructed atop a fault line, undiscovered at the time of construction, which threatened the stability of the building. As a result, it was demolished using explosives on 13 October 1996. Subsequently, the remaining buildings were newly nicknamed the Herdings Twin Towers. The site of Raeburn remained unoccupied for almost two decades, until low-rise private housing was constructed on the site and around the remaining twin towers between 2013 and 2015.
All three towers were tall, containing 48 single-bedroom flats across the upper twelve floors; the ground floor contains a laundry area and other communal facilities, taking the total floor count to thirteen. Morland was subsequently extended in height to by virtue of the placement of a rooftop radio antenna, becoming the second-tallest building in Sheffield when completed in 1959; as of June 2020, it is now the tenth-tallest, and the only remaining brutalist tower block in this article within the top 10.
The remaining twin towers were leased from the council to Places for People as private housing and subsequently refurbished in 1998, after suffering from decades of damp and draught problems due to poor construction. Leighton was renamed to Queen Elizabeth Court, receiving predominantly white cladding with green stripes; Morland was renamed to Queen Anne Court, receiving identical cladding with the exception of a blue stripe instead of green.
Hyde Park