In the late nineteenth century Sheffield, like most places, was dotted with Co-op shops selling food and all kinds of household goods.
Many co-op branches were mundane buildings which, if they survive, are difficult to recognise, but on occasions a society would make an architectural statement in the grimy streets.
The Brightside and Carbrook branch at 18/20/22 Page Hall Road, on the former tram route to Firth Park, remains a particularly spectacular landmark, faced with white faience and an elaborate composition of pilasters, aedicules and festoons.
Its opulent interiors were photographed at the time of its opening in 1914, when smart assistants and the manager, Alf Sparkes, waited expectantly for the first customers.
It served a moderately affluent community with clothing, drapery and haberdashery. An early image shows that the fascia advertised “clothing & outfitting…boots & shoes…linoleum & carpets…drapery, millinery and costumes”.
A much later image of the frontage dated 1952, showing that the white faience had become distinctly grubby in Sheffield’s polluted atmosphere, advertises “baby linen, ribbons, laces, a millinery showroom, ladies’ & childrens’ underwear, furs, corsets, skirts [and] a mantle showroom”.
At the time it closed on June 12th 1965 the front windows advertised “Co-operative furnishing, footwear…outfitting [and] drapery”.
Since then the building has been used as Patnick’s Junk Shop (1972), Pope’s DIY superstore (1993), Khawaja & Sons Halal Supermarket and presently the Hamza Supermarket.
It was listed Grade II in 1995.
Across the road is a less regarded building, 25 Page Hall Road, which has an inscription ‘FIRTH PARK COLISEUM’ and the date 1906. This has prompted overenthusiastic cinema enthusiasts sometimes to speculate that it was a cinema, but in fact it was a rival to the Co-op opposite.
It was owned by the outfitter Mr Samuel Alonzo Peel, who also ran the Emporium and Peel’s Stores in the nearby suburb of Brightside.
He was provoked in May 1915 to issue the following legal notice in the Sheffield newspapers:
It has come to my knowledge that statements have been made to the effect that the above businesses are not in a good financial condition and that I have therefore been compelled to work as a Turner at one of the large firms in Sheffield. Such a statement is untrue. When I heard of the shortage of men (although I have been out of the trade twelve years) I returned to this trade purely from a patriotic motive. My businesses are financially sound and if I can ascertain who the originators of the above slander are I shall be prepared to take proceedings against them… [Searching Picture Sheffield].
May 1915 is the precise date of the Lusitania riots, which destroyed many German butchers’ businesses in Sheffield and other cities: Libraries Sheffield: From the Archives: Sheffield and the Lusitania riots of 1915 (shefflibraries.blogspot.com).
According to the information in Picture Sheffield, Mr Peel died in 1925. His Coliseum survives. When I first knew it and puzzled over the inscription in the 1970s it was a launderette. Since 2014 it has been SK Market – Mix Potraviny. Mix Potraviny is Slovak for “mixed food”.