Sheffield 3: Gleadless Valley

I had the good fortune to spend a day last week with Owen Hatherley flanning about Sheffield. We spent a good while in the hidden secret of Gleadless Valley which, in some wonderful and rare English Spring time sunshine, could have almost been mistaken for a Mediterranean idyl had it not been for the shirtless tattooed louts and scenic rubbish strewn about.



But its reputation preceded it because it is a quite magnificent place. As a "sink estate", it also has one of the worst reputations in Sheffield. Taking the tram south from the centre of town, we climbed up past Park Hill to witness some surprising views back to the centre which is still in an eternal indecision between demolition and reconstruction. The tram stops at Manor Top where cheap TV shows like "Police, Camera, Action" are regularly filmed due to the propensity of its youths for joy riding. Then we alight at Gleadless where we take a 10 minute walk down the hill to the valley.



These pictures are of one of Sheffield's worst estates. If you can't believe me, read These links from the local Sheffield Star.



Gleadless Valley was designed and built coincidentally with Park Hill between 1955 and 1962 under the supervision of city architect J.L. Womersley, but what a contrast to its more famous urban brother down the hill. There are quite a mixture of housing types all picturesquely scattered across the landscape and taking advantage of Sheffield's greatest asset - its topography.
It is reminiscent of the Sharawaggi Picturesque that the Architectural Review was trying to promote in the immediate post-war period, where modern architecture was aestehtically composed in the landscape. It is commonly thought that the 1951 Fetival of Britain was the culmination of this aesthetic ideal, but a trip around Gleadless Valley would put paid to that. It does lack the variety of building types, with only a row of shops, a pub or two and a church intermingled between the housing, but otherwise, the composition is always surprising, always related to its natural setting and consists of close-up to long-distance views so you can quite clearly understand your position in the environment.

A number of Segal-esque decked timber terraces back into the hills.



And a little further on, the brick terraces slide down the hill with a complementary monopitch



Like Park Hill, decks project along the buildings until they hit the ground so that there is always level access at some point:



Aware of the danger of hyperbole, there is even an whiff of Southern California about the grouping and lines of some of the blocks when viewed from below:




The buildings look tired but generally kempt and besides the obvious uPVC window invasion, still very much in the original design. The flat roofs are still flat, for example, which surprised me. Clearly, as these properties are council owned, it's a different story to Pessac where the owners decided to completely disfigure Corb's vision (see Philippe Boudon's "Lived In Architecture" of 1972). Nevertheless, I didn't witness great swathes of graffiti or vandalism other than some dubiously retrofitted doors and windows.



The streets are not clogged with cars as the city's more central terraced roads are and there is such an abundance of untouched green space (other than the mower that had recently left summer's first smell of freshly cut grass) that you are left wondering whether the so-called "luxury" flats being built in the centre are missing the real definition of "luxury". You can easily imagine what this area would be like today, were it developed speculatively. Cul-de-sacked detached houses stacked cheek by jowel with garages as the houses main selling feature. No room to swing a cat, never mind a three point turn and gardens that are smaller than the 6 yard area of a football pitch.



One woman was bewildered by our presence and asked us why were taking photos of Gleadless Valley. She's clearly lost any confidence in her value and therefore in that of her surroundings. She's been told she's worthless so many times, she has come to believe it. And therefore where she lives is crap too. The problems of Gleadless are entirely sociological and nothing to do with the architecture, a situation much the same as any sink estate. We will see what change the redevelopment of Park Hill has once its redevelopment is complete in another 8 years. For me, this valley makes me question the potential for architecture to be able to design away problems and make everyone's life better by design because it's not simply beautiful, it's stunningly beautiful. And although the building is only to 1950s standards, it is well designed. Yet the statistics on unemployment, crime, teenage pregnancy and exam results are some of - if not the - worst in Sheffield. The roots of this valley's problems are education and unemployment and the dissolution of a society's values where everything is evaluated by a bottom line, be it on a spreadsheet or a celebrity.