Brutalism in Sheffield

Six complexes are visible in this May 2018 view, taken from Herdings Park at the base of the Herdings Twin Towers.
1: Lansdowne
2: Hanover House
3: Netherthorpe Brook Hill
4: Upperthorpe
5: Callow Mount
6: Gleadless Valley

The 1950s and 1960s saw the construction of numerous brutalist apartment blocks in Sheffield, England. The Sheffield City Council had been clearing inner-city residential slums since the early 1900s.[1] Prior to the 1950s these slums were replaced with low-rise council housing, mostly constructed in new estates on the edge of the city.[1] By the mid-1950s the establishment of a green belt had led to a shortage of available land on the edges of the city, whilst the government increased subsidies for the construction of high-rise apartment towers on former slum land, so the council began to construct high-rise inner city estates, adopting modernist designs and industrialised construction techniques,[1] culminating in the construction of the award-winning Gleadless Valley and Park Hill estates.[2]

  1. ^ a b c Bennett, Larry (1997). Neighborhood politics: Chicago and Sheffield. Taylor & Francis. pp. 97–100. ISBN 0-8153-2113-9.
  2. ^ Harman, R.; Minnis, J. (2004). Pevsner City Guides: Sheffield. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. p. 209. ISBN 0-300-10585-1.