Category Archives: Exploring Attercliffe

Coronet filling station

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Coronet filling station, Effingham Road, Attercliffe, Sheffield

There are enthusiasts for every imaginable aspect of history.  Some fields of interest are less penetrable than others:  if you want to know about most sports there’s no shortage of sources for arcane data, and the same is true of transport by air, land and sea.

I discovered recently that there are people who collect material on petrol filling stations:  Old Garages and Filling Stations – Sheffield History, Memories & Ex-Pats – Sheffield Forum.

A little-known and remarkable example that attracted my attention is the former Coronet Filling Station on Effingham Road, between the canal and the River Don in the Lower Don Valley, of which there is a superb photograph dating presumably from the early 1950s when the site first opened.

The only online image of this picture – Coronet Petrol Station – Sheffield History Chat – Sheffield History – Sheffield Memories – appears to be from Kathryn A Morrison & John Minnis, Carscapes – The Motor Car, Architecture and Landscape in England (Yale University Press/Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art 2012).

Effingham Road acted (and still acts) as a relief road from Attercliffe to the city-centre, in the 1950s giving direct access to Victoria Station;  nowadays, as the B6071, it’s still useful to reach Sheffield Parkway en route to the M1 southbound. 

The location was ideal for a petrol station but, as one of the posts in the accompanying thread points out, the footprint of the site was crammed between the road and the Sheffield Canal. 

The need to spread the fourteen pumps and their associated tanks laterally, however, gave the architect a pretext for a spacious, eye-catching modern design.

Very few new buildings appeared in the East End in the fifteen years after the war and those that had survived the Blitz were grubby, blackened by atmospheric pollution and dated.  The Coronet filling station was by comparison glamorous – and glamour was in short supply in 1950s Attercliffe.

A guest contributor to the Sheffield History Forum, ericsson, reported his family connection with the Coronet:

My dad, Eric Shaw ran this petrol station in the very early 1950s just before I started at Whitby Road Infant School. My dad was 90 years of age on Jan 24th 2015. I’m 65 now and was born Dec 21st 1949. The name changed to Effingham Road Filling Station when my dad had it. NB the wall behind is the canal wall! We then moved on to Staniforth Road Service Station, which is still a mainly vacant lot, but eventually moved on to Abbeydale Road Filling Station, now a Tesco station. That’s progress for you.

According to two contributors to the Sheffield Forum website, Simon Tow and coffeebean, the site changed hands in 1963 and the company that owned it was wound up in 1966.  [Coronet filling station – Sheffield History, Memories & Ex-Pats – Sheffield Forum]

Recently most of the clutter of a scrap business has been removed, making it easier to recognise the visual impact of the Coronet.

In fact, most of this structure remains and could be restored if anyone thought of a compatible, appropriate use for the site. 

Attractive though it was in its heyday, it’s almost inevitable that this brave piece of 1950s design will disappear. 

Non-Pots

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Former Attercliffe Non-Political Club, Attercliffe, Sheffield (2023)

Citu, the company responsible for the Waterside development which plans to transform Attercliffe after decades of decline, is respectful of the historic heritage of the area [FIRST LOOK: Attercliffe Waterside – Citu], yet some landmarks inevitably have to be sacrificed.

The Attercliffe Non-Political Club built a particularly distinctive landmark at the junction of Effingham Road and Attercliffe Road, an eye-catcher on the approach to town from the bottom of Staniforth Road, but it’s gone.

The working-class Attercliffe community supported a range of distinctive working-men’s clubs from its Victorian heyday to the end of the twentieth century and a while after.  A politically committed workman in Attercliffe, Carbrook or Darnall had a choice of joining the Radical, the Liberal or the Conservative WMCs:  the Conservatives, prompted by Disraeli, cast themselves as the friends of the working man in opposition to the business-oriented Liberals. 

I won’t speculate why Attercliffe never had a Labour Club, but it certainly supported a thriving Non-Political Club, the “Non-Pots”, for those whose honest priority was drinking cheap beer and having a good time.

The history of these eminent organisations is patchily recorded.  The Carbrook Conservative WMC has left records dating back to 1880.  The Attercliffe Liberal Club opened in 1882, and I’ve tracked the Radical Club back at least to 1888.  The Attercliffe Non-Political Club doesn’t appear in the street directories until 1913, but it may have operated earlier elsewhere.

The Attercliffe Liberal Club carried on until Covid and closed in 2020.  The non-partisan Darnall Victory Club, founded after the First World War, closed in 2022.

The Non-Pots building was at 450 Attercliffe Road from 1913 to 1920, and from 1921 it moved round the corner to 429 Effingham Road.  The damage that building sustained in the Blitz wasn’t fully reinstated until 1950.

There are no further planning applications involving the Attercliffe Non-Political Club in Sheffield Archives after 1959, so I’m at a loss to know when the distinctive grey brick corner building with its copper roof actually opened.  Graham C, a contributor to the Sheffield History forum, suggests that the concert room moved downstairs after 1966. 

After the Non-Pots club closed, the building became a gay club, “Rockies”, and then the “Dancing Dollar”.  Latterly it was a bathroom showroom until its demise in 2025.

The history forums are very useful for recording the Non-Pots’ place in late twentieth-century show-business history.

The club was an early supporter of Charlie Williams (1927-2006), the ex-Barnsley professional footballer who paved the way for black comedians to be accepted by British audiences.  Charlie continued to show up at the “Non-Pots” even when he was appearing in The Comedians at the London Palladium, and Graham C records that on nights when Charlie returned to Attercliffe members who couldn’t get served at the crowded club bar would bring beer in from the Sportsman Inn up the road.

A younger performer who served his show-business apprenticeship at the “Non-Pots” and other places was Paul O’Grady (1955-2023).  He told Paulette Edwards on BBC Radio Sheffield, “I used to love working there. I used to do two Sundays a month in Rockies.”  The fact that Lily Savage came to Attercliffe needs to be commemorated, otherwise the next generation might not believe it.

Whatever structure arises at the corner of Attercliffe Road and Effingham Road, I hope it carries blue plaques to honour two fine performers who were held in deep affection by the people who lived in Attercliffe before – and indeed after – the terraced houses were swept away.

A Walk Round Attercliffe

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Britannia Inn, Worksop Road, Attercliffe Sheffield (2010)

I’ve led A Walk Round Attercliffe every year since 2017, only missing 2020 because of the pandemic lockdown.

These walks are part of the Heritage Open Days event programme and take place on a September weekday, usually Friday, including visits to St Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Church, the former Sheffield & Hallamshire Bank (now a running shop) and the Zion Graveyard.

As a result, each year there’s a substantial waiting-list.  For health-and-safety reasons these walks are limited to 25 participants, and in 2025 I had a waiting list of fifty disappointed people.  I run only one Heritage Open Days Walk Round Attercliffe a year because I need to maintain goodwill with the sites that open up for us specially.

It’s become obvious that I should devise a version of the walk suitable for Sunday afternoons, and because the church and the running shop are unavailable, I include a visit to the Zion Graveyard and a comfort stop, with hot and cold drinks and cake available, at the Don Valley Hotel, formerly the Coach & Horses pub, opened in 1901.

The pilot Sunday-afternoon Walk Round Attercliffe was fully booked and took place on April 26th 2026.  There was yet another waiting list, so I’ve arranged a follow-up tour on Sunday June 7th 2026, starting at 2.00pm at the Attercliffe tram stop.  Wheelchair users are very welcome to join. There’s an accessible entrance to the Zion Graveyard.

I grew up in Attercliffe in the 1950s, and I understand why there’s such a level of interest in the memory of the grimy community that surrounded the steel works.  There are plenty of people still alive who were brought up in the terraced houses and went to the huge Victorian board schools, and the following generations who’ve heard the ancestral stories are curious to understand the profound changes that continue to take place.

The Lower Don Valley was the powerhouse of Sheffield’s heavy steel industry and Attercliffe was where its workers lived.  Though many buildings have disappeared what remains is a fascinating insight into the life of a once-thriving community, and there are countless stories located in the Valley, from the inventor Benjamin Huntsman to the comedian Charlie Williams.

If you’d like to join a Walk Round Attercliffe, please book at A Walk Round Attercliffe Tickets, Sunday, June 7  •  2 PM – 4:30 PM | Eventbrite.

Keeping clean and healthy in industrial Attercliffe

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Attercliffe Baths, Sheffield: staircase detail

Whenever I’ve led A Walk Round Attercliffe, whether for schoolkids, postgraduate architectural students or Heritage Open Days participants, the itinerary always ends at Attercliffe Baths.

The Lower Don Valley History Trail blue plaque on the corner of the building says that the Baths “provided both swimming and washing facilities for the area at a time when bathrooms at home were unknown” and “ was also Attercliffe’s speakers’ corner”.

A trawl through local newspapers in the online British Newspaper Archive reveals a more detailed view of the importance of this landmark building.

Keeping clean and healthy in the profoundly grubby, polluted atmosphere of the industrial East End was a never-ending battle for the people who lived in the modest terraces, and particularly for the men (and, in wartime, women) who grafted in the hot, noisy, dangerous works that towered above the streets.

The countryside disappeared from the Don Valley from the 1840s onwards, and Sheffield’s first baths, at Borough Bridge in Neepsend, opened in 1869.  Ten years later, the Corporation completed the Attercliffe Baths on the corner of Leeds Road and Attercliffe Common.

The fact that they cost almost £13,000 – four times the cost of the Neepsend baths – caused controversy, and subsequent municipal baths of equivalent size were cheaper:  Upperthorpe Baths cost £8,484 when it was completed in 1894. 

The architect of Attercliffe Baths was William Horace Stovin (1833-1908), the assistant borough surveyor.  He died in Canada, but his name lives on in Stovin Drive, Darnall.

For a century, the pool at Attercliffe Baths was used for swimming and lifesaving lessons, recreation and sport, and the slipper baths gave Attercliffe people the opportunity, at modest cost, to luxuriate in a private cubicle with a deep tub, hot water, soap and a towel for a few pence.

There were downsides to this busy, popular place.  The changing cubicles around the swimming pool were protected only by a curtain, and thefts were frequent.  Only those who were caught and sent to court are recorded – a pair of boots in 1881, sums of money lifted from pockets, from 1½d to £1 9s 6d.  Once, in 1908, an alert manager, John Parker, noticed a “somewhat unusual” sight, a boy in girl’s clothing.  The costume was stolen, and the thief was fined twenty shillings by the Stipendiary Magistrate.

There were fatalities in the slipper baths – from epilepsy (1903 and 1931), “natural causes” (1924) and an attempted suicide in 1911.

In 1894 the Attercliffe Free Library was built on the adjacent land on Leeds Road, and there was talk of a “laundry”, which eventually became the Wash House at Oakes Green a quarter of a mile away, opened in 1937.  Other less likely schemes, for a Turkish bath and an open-air pool, were shelved.

Furthermore, the Baths was a focus for public political meetings, sometimes indoors – the Attercliffe Independent Labour Party (1903), the Socialist Labour Party (1906) and the Anti-Socialist Union (1910).  Otherwise, meetings were held in the open air, or groups met outside the Baths, where there was plentiful road space, before processing elsewhere.

The baths closed in the 1980s.  The pool was filled in, and a conversion to office use retained and refurbished some of the interior features that cost so much in 1879, such as the tiled staircase with its cast banister incorporating the then newly-awarded borough coat of arms.

So much of Attercliffe’s architectural heritage has been lost that it’s gratifying to know that Mr Stovin’s staircase is in good condition.

A Walk Round Attercliffe: The pilot Walk Round Attercliffe, starting and finishing near the Attercliffe tram stop is sold out, and there’s a further opportunity to join this 2½-hour exploration on Sunday June 7th 2026, 2.00pm-4.30pm, starting at the Attercliffe tram stop

Further details and bookings are at A Walk Round Attercliffe | Eventbrite.

The tailor of taste

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Burton’s Building, 783-787 Attercliffe Road, Sheffield
Burton’s Building, 582-588 Attercliffe Road, Sheffield
Burton’s Building, 783-787 Attercliffe Road, Sheffield: entrance detail © Simon Hollis

My mate Simon had an opportunity recently to inspect the interior of the former Burton’s shop at 783-787 Attercliffe Road, Sheffield and sent me a collection of images.  The shop exterior is intact though time-worn, and still bears decorative features that can be restored.  The interior, like the Banners department store a couple of hundred yards away, was simply a space for shop fittings, most of which have disappeared.

The Burton tailoring empire was founded by a remarkable man, a Russian Jew born Meshe David Osinsky (1885-1952), who emigrated to Britain at the start of the twentieth century with £100 to his name and hardly a word of English.

He began as an itinerant pedlar, and opened his first shop at Holywell Cross, Chesterfield in 1904.  From there he expanded to Mansfield and then Sheffield.  He married in 1909 and started his family in a modest but respectable cul-de-sac, Violet Bank Road in Nether Edge.

The men’s suits he sold were bought in at first, initially off-the-peg until 1906 when he offered a bespoke made-to-measure service.  By 1910 he moved to Leeds to manufacture his own garments, and in the 1920s his Hudson Road premises became the largest clothing factory in Europe with 10,500 employees.

His identity became grand as his business flourished:  his name was Morris Burton by 1909 when he applied for British citizenship;  he quickly changed to Maurice Burton, and by 1917 he was Montague Maurice Burton.  In 1931 he became Sir Montague Burton.

It’s possible, but not certain, that his suits originated the expression “full Monty” – jacket, waistcoat and two pairs of trousers.

In 1923 he hired the Leeds architect Harry Wilson to design the company’s new buildings on freehold sites in an instantly recognisable house style which in fact embraced a variety of materials and architectural features. There’s a detailed account of the company’s distinctive architecture at Burton’s ‘Modern Temples of Commerce’ | Building Our Past and the two-part A Spotter’s Guide to Montague Burton – the Tailor of Taste, Part 1 | Building Our Past and A Spotter’s Guide to Montague Burton – the Tailor of Taste, Part 2 | Building Our Past.  At the time of his death there were 616 Burton’s stores.

783-787 Attercliffe Road is typical:  it’s located on a corner site next to the Adelphi Cinema.  A white faience façade divided by pilasters fronts a steel-framed structure, and there were prominent reliefs (one of which remains intact) of the contemporary Burton logo with its strapline “The Tailor of Taste”.  The first floor is top-lit because of the proximity of surrounding buildings, some of which have since been demolished.  Surviving decorative features include the foundation stone laid by Stephen Austin Burton (possibly a grandson), the mosaic-floored entrance with original cast-metal glazing bars and at least one glass panel naming Burton stores in other towns and cities.

There’s also a slightly earlier, more restrained Burton’s building on the corner of Staniforth Road at 582-588 Attercliffe Road (1931).  Stanley Howard Burton (Sir Montague’s eldest son) laid the foundation stone.  Upstairs was at one time the Astoria Ballroom, and by 1944 it was a billiard saloon.  It’s now occupied by a monumental mason, Madani Memorials.

The proximity of two Burton’s tailor’s shops tells us that Attercliffe folk were not rich but they were prudent, and many of them had cash and believed that “best is cheapest”.

Burton’s brand is now found only online, but around a couple of hundred of Harry Wilson’s buildings survive, though in England and Wales only half a dozen are listed, largely because English Heritage takes a dim view of good buildings stripped of their interiors.

Let’s hope the new owner of 783-787 Attercliffe Road treats the building kindly, because it commemorates the time when an ordinary working man could first afford a “Sunday-best” outfit as an alternative to his workaday clothes.

158 years of continuing prayer

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St Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Church, Attercliffe, Sheffield

When I run my annual Heritage Open Days Walk Round Attercliffe we visit one of only two remaining Christian places of worship in the Lower Don Valley. It’s also the only historic place of worship in the Valley that has been in continuous use since it was built.

The Roman Catholic Church of St Charles Borromeo was consecrated in 1868 to provide a home for a congregation that had been meeting since 1864.

This was the time when the flat rural meadows and gardens of the Lower Don Valley were being replaced by huge steelworks served by rail and canal. 

Housing for the workers, many of whom came from surrounding counties and as far away as Ireland, had to be within walking distance of the works because public transport was inadequate and expensive.

The church was the gift of Mr William Wake of Osgathorpe, and partly financed by gifts of £500 each from the Duke of Norfolk and from Mrs Wake and her family.  The eventual cost was £4,700. 

The dedication commemorates the Wakes’ son, Charles, who drowned while skating on the Serpentine in Regent’s Park in January 1867.

The building was designed by Charles John Innocent (1837-1901) and Thomas Brown (c1845-1881), who went on to design nineteen out of the twenty-two schools built by the Sheffield School Board from 1873 onwards.

Initially only the nave and the presbytery were constructed.  Charles Innocent returned in 1887 to oversee the lengthening of the nave and the construction of the baptistery and two porches to the west and the chancel, Lady Chapel and sacristy to the east.  These extensions, costing £2,400, were the gift of the Duke of Norfolk and Mr and Mrs Wade.

The interior is spacious and light, with a hammerbeam roof.  The screens, choir stalls and pulpit were designed by C J Innocent and carved by the sculptor Harry Hems of Exeter (1842-1916).  The organ is by the Norwich builder Norman & Beard, and dates from 1911.

The adjacent brick-built school was originally built in 1871 and rebuilt in 1929 in memory of the first rector of the parish, Father Joseph Hurst, who served from 1866 to 1905.  It was remodelled in 1964 by Hadfield, Cawkwell & Davidson, and closed because of falling rolls in 1981. 

After some years of use for Youth Training Scheme activities it became the Diocese of Hallam Pastoral Centre, opening on June 27th 1990.

Alongside the Centre, regular services continue in the church of St Charles, as they have done since 1868.

A Walk Round Attercliffe: The pilot Walk Round Attercliffe, starting and finishing near the Attercliffe tram stop is sold out, and there’s a further opportunity to join this 2½-hour exploration on Sunday June 7th 2026, 2.00pm-4.30pm, starting at the Attercliffe tram stop

Further details and bookings are at A Walk Round Attercliffe | Eventbrite.

Fragmentary remains

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Site of former Brightside & Carbrook Staniforth Road store: pilaster base

When I’m stuck for information about an aspect of Sheffield’s architectural and social history, one of the people I call on is Robin Hughes, trustee of Hallamshire Historic Buildings and Joined Up Heritage Sheffield.  He almost always has a detailed, referenced answer.

In return, he occasionally asks me for answers to his queries.  Sometimes I know something;  other times I’m clueless, as I was when he asked if I’d noticed three stones on the west side of Staniforth Road in Attercliffe, immediately downhill from the Pinfold Bridge across the Sheffield Canal. 

The blunt answer was no:  I must have driven past them hundreds of times and never even glanced in their direction.

Robin was at a loss to explain them, though they had clearly been significant.  Two form a pair at the boundary of Spartan Works though too far apart to mark an entrance;  the other is smaller (or perhaps lower) and immediately adjacent to the canal-bridge parapet.

It would have been irresponsible for me to speculate:  any conjecture of mine would have been no more than a wild guess.  Robin’s initial hypothesis was that they were boundary markers, and he found an 1819 map on Picture Sheffield to support it.  But he added, “There may be another explanation, though.”

And there was.  Within a couple of hours he e-mailed again with the correct answer.

These stones are all that remains of the Brightside & Carbrook Co-operative Society’s Staniforth Road store [Print details Picture Sheffield], which was built in 1894 when Staniforth Road was still Pinfold Lane, and completely destroyed in the Blitz in December 1940.  They are, in Robin’s words “the decorative bases of the shop front pilasters, and are not functional.”  The building was designed by the B&C’s preferred architect, Henry Webster.  In this Picture Sheffield image [Print details Picture Sheffield] of the ruins the single stone is visible next to the small child on the extreme left.

These almost invisible vestiges mark a place where Attercliffe people shopped for “value for money furniture”, jewellery, prams, pianos, cycles, carpets, rugs and mats, according to an advertisement in The Sheffield Co-operator (May 1924) that promises “Give us your co-operation, and we will give you Civility, Attention, and Free Delivery”:  Issue_021_May_1924.pdf (principle5.coop) [page 3].

It’s also a memento of a night of terror in December 1940 when bombs rained on Attercliffe obliterating familiar shops, pubs and churches, making many houses uninhabitable and killing at least 660 people across the city.

These three small pilaster bases would almost certainly have been forgotten without Robin’s detective work, and their history would have been lost.

In the imminent rejuvenation of Attercliffe I suggest it’s important to commemorate the lives and lifestyles that went before.

The Friends of Zion Graveyard have made it easy for visitors to visualise what was on their site until a few decades ago by raising funds to install professionally composed interpretation boards that are now accompanied by a £5 guide book.

The writer Neil Anderson has led a series of effective campaigns to ensure that the 1940 Sheffield Blitz is not forgotten.  His easy-to-use app [Sheffield Blitz 85th] enables anyone with a mobile phone in their hand to visit relevant locations in and around the city centre, accompanied by the voice of the late Doug Lightning, the last surviving firefighter to have been on duty in the midst of the raid.  Ian Castle has commemorated the World War I raid on the Lower Don Valley in 1916: 25/26 Sep 1916.

Attercliffe has more than enough sites associated with the Blitz to make a walking trail that captures for younger generations the impact of two nights’ destruction in the dark days of the Second World War.  Alongside books, videos and apps, there’s a special immediacy to markers of the actual sites that casual pedestrians can stumble upon, like Gunter Demnig’s Stolpersteine:  Stolpersteine | Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times.

If “heritage” means anything, it’s about linking the experience of past generations to the imagination of those who follow.

A Walk Round Attercliffe: The pilot Walk Round Attercliffe, starting and finishing near the Attercliffe tram stop is sold out, and there’s a further opportunity to join this 2½-hour exploration on Sunday June 7th 2026, 2.00pm-4.30pm, starting at the Attercliffe tram stop

Further details and bookings are at A Walk Round Attercliffe | Eventbrite.

The new Adelphi

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Adelphi Cinema, Attercliffe, Sheffield: balcony plasterwork (1982)
Adelphi Cinema, Attercliffe: balcony (2023) [© Dan Butlin]

Sheffield has only two listed cinema buildings, both coincidentally opened in 1920 – the Abbeydale Picture House, designed as a multi-purpose entertainment venue with a full theatre stage, a ballroom, a billiard saloon and a café, and the Adelphi, Attercliffe, a straightforward silent-movie house which at the time of listing in 1996 was largely intact inside and out.

At present the Abbeydale is in a state of limbo.  Problems with the auditorium ceiling have led to a legal stand-off between the landlord and the lessee which needs to be resolved to safeguard the integrity of the building and enable a full restoration to take place.

There has been a flurry of media attention about the Adelphi, which was purchased by Sheffield City Council in March 2023 for refurbishment as a mixed-use cultural space, much needed for the revival and transformation of the local community. The Adelphi is on the market, with a promise of Levelling Up funding to make it once again “occupiable”:  Levelling Up: Adelphi Cinema in Attercliffe out to market (sheffnews.com).

A very attractive CGI image shows what the interior might look like after refurbishment, yet nowhere in the media coverage is there any indication that the original 1920 decoration has completely disappeared.

The auditorium in its current state is a bleak contrast to how it looked at the time it was surveyed for listing, with “pilasters, segment-arched panelled ceiling and [a] moulded proscenium arch with [a] central crest flanked by torches [and a] U-shaped gallery with [a] latticework plaster front”.  The original scheme was delicate and light:  Searching Picture Sheffield;  Searching Picture Sheffield.

The listing inspector observed that “cinemas dating from this period, between 1918 and the introduction of sound in the early 1930s, are comparatively rare”.

What happened? 

I e-mailed a city councillor who will be in a position to know (or find out) but I’ve so far received no response.

I photographed the interior in 1982 when it was a bingo club and again in 1990 when it was unoccupied.  At the time the entire auditorium was bristling with classical plaster decoration designed by the architect William Carter Fenton (1861-1950;  Lord Mayor 1922).

A cluster of urban-explorer reports in 2011 suggests that conversion to a night-club was largely respectful of the building’s listed status, despite the need for structural alterations.

The building was sold for storage use in 2013 and at some point the plasterwork was stripped out.

Recent images show a bleak space that looks nothing like a 1920s cinema.  The CGI image represents an admirable exercise in making the best of a bad job, apart from the puny chandeliers.

Maybe there was a legitimate reason to take down the plasterwork:  perhaps it was unstable and might have injured someone.  Maybe the owner at the time discussed the matter with the Council planning authority, but I’ve never heard any public mention of alterations in the years after the listing.

Though the Adelphi deserves to retain its Grade II listing because its fine exterior survives intact, it now bears no comparison with the Abbeydale, and there are other Sheffield cinemas with surviving interior features which haven’t been considered for protection:

And if the stripping of the auditorium plasterwork was unauthorised, should there not be consequences for a flagrant disregard of the laws about listed buildings?

Update: Since I wrote this article in 2023, there has been much better news about the Abbeydale Picture House – Abbeydale Ballroom | Sheffield’s new social space | pool hall.

A Walk Round Attercliffe: The pilot Walk Round Attercliffe, starting and finishing near the Attercliffe tram stop is sold out, and there’s a further opportunity to join this 2½-hour exploration on Sunday June 7th 2026, 2.00pm-4.30pm, starting at the Attercliffe tram stop

Further details and bookings are at A Walk Round Attercliffe | Eventbrite.

Zion Graveyard 4

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Zion Congregational Church and Sabbath School, Attercliffe, Sheffield (1978)

When I went looking for the site of the Zion Congregational Church in 2017 while reconnoitring my Heritage Open Days Walk Round Attercliffe, all that could be seen through the boundary fence was a twelve-foot-high jungle.

Coincidentally, that was the summer when the group that maintains the undenominational Upper Wincobank Chapel came looking for the burial place of the Chapel’s founder, Mary Ann Rawson (1801-1887). 

It took a great deal of work to locate her family tomb, and the group resolved to form the Friends of Zion Graveyard, which quickly purchased and restored the site and made it accessible.

I don’t do gardening, so instead I’ve brought visitors to the Graveyard through my Walks Round Attercliffe and Bus Rides Round Attercliffe and busied myself researching the history of the buildings and the generations of worshippers dating back to the end of the eighteenth century.

During the lockdown period the Friends produced a series of interpretation boards – to which I contributed – to fix to the boundaries of the Graveyard.

These make a significant difference to visitors’ understanding, particularly because the images show how much the surroundings have changed since the 1970s:  two of the congregation’s three buildings have been destroyed, along with all of the surrounding housing.

Visitors to the Zion Graveyard can now take away the information and the pictures in a guide-book, The Story of Zion Graveyard Attercliffe:

A Walk Round Attercliffe: The pilot Walk Round Attercliffe, starting and finishing near the Attercliffe tram stop is sold out, and there’s a further opportunity to join this 2½-hour exploration, including a visit to the Zion Graveyard, on Sunday June 7th 2026, 2.00pm-4.30pm, starting at the Attercliffe tram stop.

Further details and bookings are at A Walk Round Attercliffe | Eventbrite.

My dad’s lost opportunity

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King Edward VII School, Sheffield

I’ve known for a long time that my dad missed a lifetime opportunity in 1926 at the age of twelve when he was awarded a scholarship to King Edward VII Grammar School, which had a reputation as the best place in Sheffield to gain an education.

King Ted’s, as people called it (and still do), was at the time a fee-paying school where there were social expectations alongside academic opportunities.

My dad’s parents felt compelled to turn the scholarship down because they simply couldn’t afford the incidentals such as uniform and fares and needed their sons and daughters to start work at the then school-leaving age of fourteen.

In addition, it was the year of the General Strike and they had five children, with a sixth on the way, and there was no telling which of them might pass scholarships in future.  My granddad was a boilerman in the coke ovens at Tinsley Park, so their finances were precarious.

All this was simply family history of purely personal interest until I came across an obituary for Bill Moore (1911-2008), a celebrated figure in left-wing politics in Yorkshire and beyond, who was said to be the first Attercliffe boy to win a free scholarship to grammar school:  https://grahamstevenson.me.uk/2008/09/19/bill-moore.

This set me thinking.  King Edward’s was founded in 1905.  If it took seventeen years for a lad from any of the numerous elementary schools in the Lower Don Valley to gain a free grammar-school education, perhaps my dad might have been the second.

I checked the Education Committee minutes and without looking further back than 1920 I discovered that Bill Moore was by no means the first Attercliffe lad to go to King Ted’s.  Between eleven and twenty scholarships were awarded each year from 1920 to 1926, mostly to pupils from schools on the prosperous west side of the city. 

In 1921 William Wild, aged 12 years 3 months, left my alma mater, Huntsman’s Gardens Council School, for King Edward’s on a Close Entrance Scholarship.  His father was a brass foundry manager, so could no doubt afford the tram fare, yet the family lived on Brinsworth Street, two minutes’ walk from Huntsman’s Gardens, in the very heart of the industrial East End – by no means a leafy affluent suburb.

By the time Bill Moore was eligible in the summer of 1923 the system had changed and under his birth name, Enos Leslie Moore, he was awarded a Free Scholarship, “tenable for the period of school life and covering free tuition, the provision of all school amenities and the use, but not the gift, of books” along with a maintenance grant.

He stayed at King Edward’s until 1930 when he won a further scholarship to study history at Oriel College, Oxford.  In 1935, after graduation he joined the Communist Party and engaged in left-wing politics for the rest of his long life.

Bill Moore’s story gives me a perspective of the magnitude of my dad’s loss, and explains why he and my mother were so keen for me to have the opportunity that had been denied them.

For that I have always been profoundly grateful.