News - £2m boost for Sheffield heritage projects

STAFF at two historical attractions in Sheffield are celebrating after scooping £2 million in lottery cash to spend on improvements.


Sheffield Cathedral and Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, which are each Grade I listed, have both been successful in applying for grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Both can now do major work to transform them into top attractions for the city.

Fiona Spiers, head of the Heritage Lottery Fund for Yorkshire and the Humber, said: “This investment is fantastic news for Sheffield - two of the city’s much-loved heritage sites awarded funding to improve their visitor experience and bring them alive for the next generation.

“A stunning cathedral, dating back to 1430, and an 18th-century steelworks, a rare time capsule from a bygone industrial age, will now offer exciting opportunities for people of all ages to get involved in the heritage on their doorstep.”

Sheffield Cathedral has been awarded £1.3 million on a new entrance, learning and exhibition space, learning activities for children and adults, training for staff and volunteers, lighting, signs and historical interpretation boards.

Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, a former 18th-century steel works near Dore, will spend its £895,700 restoring the delicate waterwheels and machinery and creating a new heritage and learning centre as well as training programmes for volunteers.

The aim is to encourage the community to learn and pass on traditional millwright skills for future generations.

John Hamshere, Chief Executive of Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust which is responsible for the Hamlet, said: “This is great news and we are delighted the bid has been successful.”

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/lifestyle/2m-boost-for-sheffield-heritage-projects-1-4989065

News - Pressure is mounting for clean-up of dam and park (Sheffield)

VOLUNTEERS are pressing for political support to spruce up one of the most popular parts of the Porter Valley in Sheffield.

Initial plans centre on desilting Forge Dam and repairing the dam walls, before improving the area around the cafe and improving the playground.

The project is being driven by the Friends of the Porter Valley, who are already steering the reopening of the Shepherd Wheel after a £1m fundraising campaign.

Increasingly, their attention is turning to Forge Dam. “About half a million people a year are going through the park and, according to our surveys, between a fifth and a quarter are from outside the immediate area,” said Ann le Sage, who chairs the Friends.

“It’s a park for Sheffield and at present it’s dreadful.”

Volunteers have spent hundreds of hours clearing scrub and saplings from surrounding woodland, but are looking for council support for the first part of a proposed programme to desilt the dam and to remove tree roots and strengthen the walls. The estimated cost is £360,000.

Ann said she understood the financial pressures on the council, but with the offer of volunteer help and the credibility of the Friends proven at Shepherd Wheel, she had high hopes.

Later it would be a case of securing funds, probably around £1m, from the likes of the Heritage Lottery Fund to carry out the rest of the programme.

Ann added: “There is a lot of thinking to do once we get answers from the council. With goodwill and hard work, we should be able to make it.”

A masterplan, backed by the Friends and the council’s south west community assembly, was drawn up after a public consultation exercise.

The dam was cleaned about 20 years ago and long before that it was used for boating. “When we did the consultation, I lost count of the number of people who said they had been on a boat on the dam. We are not planning to go down that route, although we are not ruling it out.”

Ambitions include trying to prevent further desilting of the dam by working with landowners upstream, and the possibility of a small hydro power scheme, for education purposes as well for generating electricity for the cafe.

The Friends are aiming to have Shepherd Wheel back in action as a visitor attraction this year after raising £500,000 themselves and with £500,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

It will be run by Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust, which already operates Kelham Island Industrial Museum and Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet.

From: http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news/pressure_is_mounting_for_clean_up_of_dam_and_park_1_4135845

Article - Sheffield at full steam

John Hamshere came to Sheffield in September 1994, from running a group of museums and heritage sites in north Cumbria, to become the first executive director of a charitable trust set up to save Kelham Island Museum during another period of public spending cuts. The trust is responsible for Kelham Island Museum, Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet and will be taking on Shepherd Wheel when the restoration project is finished shortly.

John and his wife, Pamela, move to Ecclesfield when their elder son, Joe, was two and Jake was born three months later.

Kelham’s 17th Christmas Market is on Saturday and Sunday, when John dresses as a Victorian gentleman. “My lads used to call me the Fat Controller from the Thomas the Tank Engine books, which I always thought was a little unfair!”

River Don Engine

I always say that I really came to Sheffield to save this magnificent machine at Kelham. I first saw the mighty 12,000hp engine in action on a field trip during my masters degree in industrial archaeology at Ironbridge in the early 1980s. When I read that it could be scrapped I knew I had to try to get the job of director of the trust set up to rescue the museum. I never tire of watching it and feel the ground shake. It says more about the power of Sheffield industry than anything else.

Sheffield Tigers RUFC

Both my sons have grown up playing for Tigers junior teams since they were six and eight. Now they are 16 and 19 and Jake still plays for the U18s, a year above his age group. They are prop forwards as I was, as their uncle was and as their grandad. Unfortunately they have suffered their share of injuries with Joe sidelined at university with a second dislocated shoulder needing another operation and Jake has had a knee operation. It’s a tough game. But Tigers has been a great club for all of us and we have enjoyed their progress up the divisions and successful trips to Twickenham. Best of all was a memorable U15s tour to Madrid with both my lads playing a part and the team finishing second in a tournament, only losing in extra time to a ‘golden try’.

Real ale pubs

Another abiding interest is real ale and, of course, Sheffield is incredibly rich in the variety available. A couple of weeks ago I took a friend, a southerner, on a pub crawl through the Kelham area where there are so many great pubs and beers. We only made it to three pubs and yet had many different beers of several styles. I had heard about the Fat Cat before I came to Sheffield. In fact the weekend before I started at the museum, I was at a beer festival in North Wales and found a pint of Kelham Island Bitter and asked if it came from the Fat Cat. Indeed it did, and a couple of days later I turned up for my first day at Kelham. My favourite of the moment is the Sheffield Tap at the station which Joe introduced me to.

The city

I grew up in Birmingham and have lived in London and the North East and even Leeds, but for me Sheffield is now home and a great place to live. I love the scale of the city. It has everything and yet it is contained by the seven hills and you can be in the most wonderful countryside in a matter of minutes. I live in Ecclesfield at the top of a hill with a superb view at the back and the landmark of Keppel’s Column. I love just sitting looking at the countryside from our dining room window as the seasons change. It is beautiful at the moment with all the colours in the trees and it was a spectacular ‘white-out’ last year with the snow. We enjoy the many walks available around here, but do not get out as often as we would like.

Sheffield Theatres

I feel privileged to have enjoyed so many great evenings at the Crucible and the Lyceum over many years with Pamela. There are so many stand-out memories that I can’t list them all but fresh in the mind is Othello where Dominic West was mesmerising. Kenneth Branagh was brilliant in Richard III. I can visualise the frightening entrance of the Spanish Inquisition in Schiller’s Don Carlos, which of course I didn’t expect. The two lads enjoyed the Firework Maker’s Daughter and A Midsummer Nights Dream. I had not seen the film of Fiddler on the Roof, not being much of a fan of musicals, so it was a revelation to see Henry Goodman and how the story addressed the horror of the pogroms. We also very much enjoyed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf. I could go on.

Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet

The hamlet has such a special atmosphere at the October steam day, with half a dozen traction engines and steam rollers filling the air with steam and smoke and the smell of hot oil. This place more than anywhere else represents the story of Sheffield with the combination of crucible steel-making, water power and the houses showing the lives of both the workers and the managers. It is the most important heritage site in Sheffield and shows what made the city – the combination of power from the rivers coming down from the hills and the availability of natural resources. The late Professor Francis Evans, a strong supporter of the campaign to save the site when it was closed in 1997, always told me that the origins may have been with the Cistercian monks of Beauchief Abbey, with the industry created around their abbeys across Europe representing the first multinational company. We took it on in 1998, reopened it and have successfully got through the first stage in the process of seeking lottery funding for £900,000 to secure its future.

Industrial archaeology

There is a wealth all around the city and I am still an industrial archaeologist at heart, although I have not had much chance to be one for many years as I have had to spend my time trying to raise money to save the bits of it I am responsible for. Recently I really enjoyed climbing in and being winched down as far as I could go into the flooded mine shaft at the Elsecar Newcomen Engine and while down there having to rescue the roving underwater camera that had got snagged. However, all too soon it was back to budgets, reports and grant applications!

From: http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news/sheffield_at_full_steam_1_4023175

News - Grant award helps museum expansion (Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet)

Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet has received a National Lottery grant to fund preparatory work towards a £900,000 project aiming to ‘transform’ the museum.

Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust, which runs the site, off Abbeydale Road South, has been awarded £47,200 to help develop the plans, which involve creating a learning centre for educational visits, restoration of water wheels and construction of new workshops for use by modern-day metalworkers.

The trust is to apply to the Heritage Lottery Fund again later this year for the balance of the funding to make the scheme a reality.

Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust said the work would ‘transform’ the museum.

Trust chairman Alex Pettifer said: “We’re delighted the Heritage Lottery Fund has given us this support, it is a truly significant success for the trust.

“Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet is a place of outstanding historical significance and it is important that we continue to preserve the site.

“Sheffield will be a much better place for the protection of the historical and industrial heritage of the city and how it helped place Sheffield on the world map.”

Fiona Spiers, head of the Heritage Lottery Fund for Yorkshire and the Humber, added: “Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet provides a great insight into the industrial heritage that is synonymous with the local area. “We are pleased to give initial support to this worthwhile project.”

The museum incorporates numerous 18th and 19th century listed buildings and is listed as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/grant_award_helps_museum_expansion_1_3815585

TV - Children of the Revolution (BBC4 01 February 19.00)

Historian Jane Humphries tells the story of the child workers whose exploitation contributed to the success of the Industrial Revolution. The programme features animation and testimony from children - some of whom were aged as young as six - who worked in Victorian Britain, and the presenter sheds light on their experiences and the importance of their labour

From: http://www.locatetv.com/tv/children-of-the-revolution/149343

Head of steam starts to build for hamlet upgrade (Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet)

AN £800,000 lottery bid is being prepared to fire up Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet as a visitor attraction. Funds are being sought to improve the educational facilities, bring the waterwheels back into action and to make the 18th century complex more accessible for schools, community groups and disabled people. Another aim is to provide space for an updated equivalent of the ‘little mesters’ – the craftsmen who helped to forge Sheffield industrial reputation.  The ‘modern mesters’ would work in jewellery or art, for example.

In general Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust is looking to make the hamlet more of a destination for visitors and trying to showcase the city’s industrial heritage by encouraging combined visits to Kelham Island Industrial Museum and the Shepherd Wheel in the Porter Valley.  It is hoped to make a £800,000 submission to the Heritage Lottery Fund in June, councillors were told this week.  “We want to make Abbeydale more accessible, particularly to schools and community groups,” said Alex Pettifer, who chairs the trust.

A new single-storey glass dominated building is envisaged that is in keeping with the historic surroundings – a place where regular exhibitions could also be held.  “Ideally we want to create an education space, and we want to look at the commercial potential of a ‘modern mesters’’ facility,” added Mr Pettifer.  “We would look to have artists in residence working there, maybe selling jewellery or artwork.”

The hamlet, off Abbeydale Road South, is a Grade I listed building and a Scheduled Ancient Monument. It was one of the largest water-powered sites on the River Sheaf, making agricultural scythes and other tools such as grass hooks and hay knives. Opening at Easter and running through the summer, it highlights Sheffield’s industrial past, with waterwheels, tilt hammers, a grinding hull and the only surviving intact crucible steel furnace in the world.

Living history days, steam rallies and other events are held every year but the trust wants to step up the gears, albeit against a background of less money from the council. The grant to Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust, as with other council-financed culture and sports trusts, is being cut this year.  The latest SIMT grant is £579,700 and it suffered a blow last month when the Victorian Christmas Market was called off because of snow and ice, resulting in a hole of nearly £50,000 in the budget.  This year the trust is due to look after the Shepherd Wheel, once the renovation and the dam repairs have been completed as a result of a fundraising campaign led by the Friends of the Porter Valley. It means the reopening of another industrial gem and is prompting consideration of how it can become part of a more closely connected industrial and archaeological portfolio.

From http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news/local/head_of_steam_starts_to_build_for_hamlet_upgrade_1_2906615