The Park Hill Project
The Park Hill Estate is Sheffield's most famous, or notorious, modern building. Built between 1957 and 1961, it was part of the city's slum clearance programme and was intended to be social housing along the lines of some of Le Corbusier's buildings, with "streets in the sky", wide enough for milk floats to travel along, and a full range of amenities, including police stations, pubs, shops, playgrounds and schools, on the site. The housing itself consists of four interlinked blocks containing a total of 994 units of one and two bedroomed flats and three and four bedroomed maisonettes. It provided sufficient accommodation for 3,448 people.
 
 
Architecturally, the building is in the modernist style, sometimes known as "brutalist". Concrete is the main material, with exposed steel stairways and decorative brick and tile work in some of the common areas, colour-coded red, blue, green and yellow according to the block. The four blocks vary from four to fourteen stories to accommodate the sloping site and still maintain a level roof-line. The blocks are linked to each other by bridges.
     

The concept of "streets" was intended to preserve the working class communities of the older terraces that were being swept away, although, ironically, communities in pre-war Sheffield were traditionally based on courtyards rather than streets, as they were in other British cities.

Furthermore, muggers and other forms of low-life found that they made convenient escape-routes and the vision of streets where neighbours could meet to gossip and socialise never really materialised.

   

Was it a success? In terms of slum clearance it was a huge success. The first influx of occupants found well-equipped, modern housing that was a huge improvement on the unhealthy back-to-back houses they had left behind (and which were subsequently demolished). Unfortunately, lack of investment after the flats were completed led to a general deterioration so that they gradually became almost as undesirable as the houses they had sought to replace.

In 1998 Park Hill was listed as a Grade II* listed building - defined as a building of outstanding interest. This met with derision in some quarters, especially with residents, who had already named it "San Quentin".

In 2003, the city council began to plan future work and regeneration of the buildings, together with English Partnerships, the national regeneration agency.

At the time these photographs were taken (May 2006) the work had recently started, although many flats were still occupied by tenants.
 

Written material was based on information in the Pevsner Architectural Guide to Sheffield, by Ruth Harman and John Minnis (Yale University Press) published 2004. Additional material is from http://www.open2.net/modernity/3_12.htm, and the snappily-titled http://www.sheffield.gov.uk/in-your-area/planning-and-city-development/housing-regeneration/park-hill.

All photographs copyright Chris Mattison. Please contact me if you would like to use any of them.