In my book Demolished Sheffield I used Norwood Hall as an example of how easily a valuable historic building can be lost when a determined owner wishes to be rid of it without regard to public opinion, forethought and common sense.

One of the earliest surviving buildings in the north of Sheffield, Norwood Hall was built in 1713 and for much of its history was occupied by the descendants of James Wheat, an eighteenth-century solicitor, until it was sold to Sheffield Corporation in 1916.  It passed two years later to the Diocese of Sheffield as a residence for the first Bishop, Hedley Burrows (1857-1940), and became known as Bishopsholme.

During the Second World War it was requisitioned and afterwards returned to the ownership of Sheffield City Council and listed Grade II in 1952.  Ultimately it became a social-care hostel until it closed in 1968, after which it was left empty and repeatedly vandalised. 

The City Architect at the time remarked that it didn’t “possess sufficient architectural merit to warrant its retention, and I am surprised that anyone should consider it does”.

When the proposed demolition became public knowledge in April 1969 the resulting controversy prompted to the formation of the Hallamshire Historic Buildings Society, which led a campaign accusing the Council of attempting to demolish the building by neglect.  

Two public enquiries, in February 1970 and December 1972, each concluded that the Hall was worth saving. The inspector at the second inquiry declared that the Council’s estimates of the cost of restoration were outlandish.

Despite these judgements, Sheffield City Council as guardian of health and safety overruled Sheffield City Council as protector of ancient buildings, and Norwood Hall was demolished as unsafe before dawn on June 6th 1976.

A housing estate now covers the site, which is remembered only in the street-names Bishopsholme Road and Burrows Drive.

Fifty years later, we have a parallel problem because the present-day City Council, however much it values the city’s heritage, simply hasn’t the resources to safeguard places of architectural and historic significance.

The auditorium of the Adelphi Cinema, listed Grade II, was stripped of its ornate interior plasterwork by a previous owner, and now belongs to the Council, which intends to restore it using ring-fenced Levelling Up funds.

The Old Town Hall, also listed Grade II, was never owned by the Council but was sold to a private developer early in this century, and has been left to rot ever since.  By 2007 it featured as one of the Victorian Society’s Top Ten Endangered Buildings, and in 2014 the Friends of the Old Town Hall group was established to promote its significance.  It’s now in such a state that it looks increasingly unlikely that it can be rescued.

The Abbeydale Picture House, appreciated and celebrated by the people who have enjoyed events there since 2005, is unsafe because the auditorium ceiling is in danger of collapse, and the current lessees have been denied grant aid to purchase the freehold.

The City Council has struggled for years to maintain essential services and no longer has the funds to support culture and the environment adequately.  Like other public bodies under siege, the Council has sometimes been its own worst enemy, most notoriously in the controversy over the culling of street trees in Sheffield between 2014 and 2018.

It’s unfortunate, to say the least, that the City Council, having purchased and neglected the Market Tavern on Exchange Street, eventually announced that the building had become dangerous and must be taken down, only to have to admit – in the face of evidence to the contrary from Hallamshire Historic Buildings and enterprising local journalists – that in fact it did not fall down by accident.

It’s understandable, in the face of a succession of scandals caused by the duplicity of elected members and paid officers at all levels of government across the UK, that people are increasingly cynical and distrustful about the lack of transparency in public life.

The result is that when a council commits an error it’s damned for concealing it and damned for admitting it.

There’s not much ordinary people can do to protect local buildings in distress, but we can make a loud noise in support of those who, by their voluntary, professional or political efforts are working against enormous odds to preserve the attractive and familiar environment that has been handed down to us.

Photo: Simon Hollis

At the end of November 2023 Sheffield’s digital news site Tribune published an in-depth article [The Old Town Hall has had some terrible owners. Is Gary Ata the worst? (sheffieldtribune.co.uk)] about the lamentable state of the Old Town Hall, one of the largest, oldest and most significant historic buildings in the city centre, which though Grade II listed is deteriorating inexorably.  Tribune had previously reported on the building in August 2021:  Sheffield’s Old Town Hall changes hands again (sheffieldtribune.co.uk).

I posted blog articles about the Old Town Hall in 2011 [Court adjourned | Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times], 2015 [Friends of the Old Town Hall | Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times] and 2019 [Old Town Hall at risk | Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times].

Ownership has long been a problem with this building.  It was never owned by the City Council or its elected predecessors.  It was built in 1807-08, before Sheffield was even a borough, by the Town Trustees, one of the three ancient foundations that administered the town from Tudor times. 

Through the nineteenth century the Trustees leased space to the borough authorities until the new Town Hall was completed in 1897.  After that the building became the city’s law courts until 1995 when the new Crown Court building opened on West Bar. 

The Department of the Environment bought the Old Town Hall in 2000 and passed it to a succession of property developers who allowed the place to rot.  The intentions – and sometimes the identities – of these shadowy figures have not always been apparent to the media or the public. 

By 2007 it featured as one of the Victorian Society’s Top Ten Endangered Buildings, and in 2014 the Friends of the Old Town Hall group was established to promote its significance.

The only owner who made a positive effort to put the Old Town Hall to commercial use was Mr Efekoro Omu, whose 2019 scheme for serviced apartments, hotel rooms in the old cells and a “souk” – “a boutique marketplace of characterful commercial spaces” – would have severely compromised its historic integrity. 

That idea sat uneasily with the scheme that the Friends had created using funds from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Architectural Heritage Fund.

Mr Omu’s scheme collapsed during the Covid lockdowns and led to his bankruptcy in 2021.  When the Old Town Hall was sold, the Friends estimated that restoration might cost £15 million.  That figure has undoubtedly risen since, as weather, inflation, vandalism and neglect take their toll, perhaps to £25 million.

The problem is conservation deficit, the gap between the cost of restoring a neglected building and its market value when fully restored.  Consequently, commercial use almost inevitably compromises historic integrity, so a prominent historic structure like the Old Town Hall needs to be supported by scarce grant aid.

Urban explorers may yet be the saving of the building because they have chronicled and publicised its increasingly miserable condition.

In Bradford the New Victoria Cinema might have gone by now if urban explorers hadn’t publicised the fact that behind post-war modernisations the original 1930 décor was intact and retrievable:  Our History Timeline | Bradford Live.

In Sheffield, two more modest cinemas bit the dust, as I chronicled in my book Demolished Sheffield [Demolished Sheffield | Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times], because their intact interiors weren’t recognised until the roof was off.  An English Heritage inspector apparently declared that the ornate Electra Palace (1911), Fitzalan Square, did not merit listing shortly before it burnt down in 1984.  The Star Cinema, Ecclesall Road (1915) was unrecognised as an intact silent-movie picture house until part way through its demolition in 1986.

I’ve met a number of building owners who are wary of the “risk” of having their buildings listed because they fear it will prevent them from using the site as they wish, but Sheffield can be proud of buildings at risk that became thriving assets to their owners and the community, such as Carbrook Hall (17th-century, II*), Greentop Circus (1876, II) and the soon-to-be-opened Leah’s Yard (mid-19th century II*).

The ultimate player in the process of rescuing buildings in distress is the City Council and it’s true that they have in the past missed chances to wrest the Old Town Hall from negligent owners.  At one time the Council had a team of planners whose brief was to monitor the city’s stock of historic structures.  Now there is only one conservation officer, and he works part time and lives outside the city.  His workload is unenviable.

For this reason, when I raise an issue about a historic building, as I did recently with the listed Adelphi Cinema, Attercliffe, I present a concern but I don’t hold my breath waiting for action.

In particular, after decades of financial strictures, the Council’s priorities are rightly prioritised to supporting essential services and helping vulnerable people.

For the immediate future, whether an old building that’s lost its purpose stands or falls depends on community stakeholders and imaginative benefactors who can work together to make the city a better place for future generations.

The least any of us can do as individuals is to express concern about the Old Town Hall, the Adelphi Cinema or any other Sheffield building that we don’t want to lose.

A good place to start is by contacting the Council’s heritage champion, Councillor Janet Ridler:  Sheffield Council makes ‘small but significant’ steps for heritage (thestar.co.uk) at Councillor details – Councillor Janet Ridler | Sheffield City Council.

In 1977 I made a point of photographing the demolition of the magnificent All Saints’ Church, Ellesmere Road, Sheffield (1869) and, incidentally, took one image of the nearby Petre Street Primitive Methodist Chapel (1869).

I knew nothing of its history;  I simply thought it looked attractive, surrounded by boarded-up terraced houses that were clearly going to disappear.

Petre Street was the largest Primitive Methodist chapel in Sheffield:  its main hall seated 1,250 and its site on a steep slope provided room for a schoolroom, institute and classrooms in addition.

It had a troubled inception.

Sited on what was then the outskirts of Sheffield, it stood on a bleak hilltop overlooking the burgeoning steelworks in the Lower Don Valley below.

During construction a storm blew away the roof in November 1867, and the contractor repaired the several hundred pounds’ worth of damage.  This was completed on Friday February 7th 1868, when the beginning of another storm obliged the workmen lash themselves to the scaffolding to avoid being blown off.

This second storm over two days and nights caused considerable damage over a wide area, including two fatalities in the centre of Sheffield.

Overnight a section of the gable end of the partly-constructed chapel fell away, and at three o’clock the following afternoon the side wall collapsed, bringing with it the roof and its timbers, filling the interior with debris and weakening the remaining side wall so that it too collapsed. 

This time the repair bill, estimated at £1,200, was the direct responsibility of the trustees, who immediately set about fundraising. 

The church was opened at an eventual cost of £5,000, with a remaining debt of £2,400, on Friday March 27th 1869.

As a community, the Petre Street Methodists lost no time.  Newspaper reports in 1869 show a relentless programme of events in addition to services – Band of Hope meetings, a sale of work, a bazaar, the oratorio Babylon and, immediately after Christmas, a tea for a thousand in two sittings, for which eight hundred tickets were sold.

The trustees’ courage and determination in surviving not one but two storms at the outset is remarkable.

At the start of the twentieth century this congregation was described by the Primitive Methodist Magazine as leading one of the most “aggressive and prosperous” Primitive Methodist circuits in Sheffield.

For a century, the two congregations, Anglicans at All Saints’ and Primitive Methodists at Petre Street, came and went each Sunday within sight of each other.

As the houses were cleared in the mid-1970s both congregations diminished.  All Saints’ had gone by the middle of 1977, and the Petre Street chapel was closed and quickly demolished in 1980, when the two churches moved together into a new building, St Peter’s, designed by the G D Frankish Partnership.

It’s an attractive design, though it lacks the impact of All Saints’ or the quieter dignity of the Petre Street chapel.

Photo: Chard

Sheffield’s Old Town Hall, on Waingate, has stood empty and unmaintained for over twenty years.  As far back as 2007 it figured on the Victorian Society’s annual list of endangered buildings, and it’s more recently been added to SAVE Britain’s Heritage Buildings at Risk register.

I wrote about it in 2011 and again in 2015, since when there has been little to report.  Successive urban-explorer reports have simply underlined the continuing decay:  https://www.proj3ctm4yh3m.com/urbex/2015/02/01/urbex-sheffield-crown-court-south-yorkshire-september-2014-revisit-4.   

Eventually, in August this year, a planning application was posted proposing a solution to the dilemma of what to do with this huge public building with its sensitive interiors.

The new owner, Mr Efekoro Omu, is already refurbishing the long-neglected Cannon public house on Castle Street.

Mr Omu’s company, Aestrom OTH, plans to clean and restore the exterior of the Old Town Hall, and intends to strip out much of the listed interior to provide twelve serviced apartments, twelve “pod” hotel rooms in the old cells and, on the basement and lower ground-floor levels, a “souk” – “a boutique marketplace of characterful commercial spaces” of 918 square metres (equal to 3½ tennis courts).

The Friends of the Old Town Hall, an energetic group of volunteers who have been monitoring the building since 2014, applauded the arrival of someone actually prepared to take on the building but were highly critical of the proposed alterations to the interior.

Mr Omu’s scheme threatens to obliterate the three most impressive courtroom spaces and compromise the Waiting Hall area, making the interior as a whole unreadable as a former courthouse.

There’s no doubt that any historic building has to earn its own keep.  In this case, the current scheme prioritises commercial necessity above historic integrity.

Some parts the Old Town Hall complex, especially the 1955 extension, lend themselves to radical alteration because their historic value is inconsiderable.

The earlier interiors, dating back to the nineteenth century with some later alterations, need more tactful treatment.

Sheffield can boast of a number of practical, attractive, sensitive refurbished historic buildings within a couple of minutes’ walk of the Old Town Hall, such as the Old Post Office in Fitzalan Square and the former bank that is now the Curzon Cinema on George Street.

The Planning Committee of Sheffield City Council meets on November 19th to decide whether to approve this application concerning a major public building in an area of the city that’s subject to radical redevelopment.

Let’s hope that the Committee gives Mr Omu every encouragement to think again in more depth about how to revive the Old Town Hall, which deserves a better fate than to become a historic shell.

Update: An outstanding penetrating report in the online Sheffield Tribune shows how much the Old Town Hall has deteriorated since I last wrote about it: The Old Town Hall has had some terrible owners. Is Gary Ata the worst? (sheffieldtribune.co.uk).

There is a 2022 urban-explorer report at Report – – Sheffield Old Town Hall And Court House – April 2022 | Other Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk.