Sheffield Tower Blocks and High rise Apartments of the 20th Century

Sheffield has an interesting history of high rise living which stretches back quite a long way. In this selection I intend to present the remaining tower blocks and apartments which remain from the 20th century. Unfortunately there are only a small number left on the ground today.

1936 Regents Court - 1959 Twin Towers - 1959/61 Upperthorpe - 1961 Park Hill Park Hill pg 2 - 1962 Netherthorpe - 1963 Callow Mount - 1964 Lansdowne - 1965 Stannington - 1966 Hanover - 1966 The Fosters - 1967 chantrey

Positioned in Gleadless Valley is a cluster of 6 original early 1960s Tower blocks.

To come upon a black and white picture of the scene you would be forgiven for thinking it was taken in the 1960s.

Callow is a superb example of this architecture, and one of the last examples of unmodernised early 1960s style tower blocks.

With 12 or 14 residential floors each, each tower contains 48 or 56 apartments and 2 passenger lifts. They reach up to 41 Metres tall, although positioned at slightly varying heights. The tower at the top of the cluster, the most easterly one, is slightly different in that each apartment contains two bedrooms instead of one, it has two extra residential floors and it's outbuilding contains the local civic heating system for all six blocks. You can see in the above photo that it has 3 metal chimneys attached to it's northern face.

Here again we can see the differences between the highest tower and the closest tower. The rearone has an extra bank of windows to light the extra bedroom, extra floors and the heating chimneys. Being the highest and tallest stucture it also is the only tower with antennae on it's roof.

All the towers benefit from central heating from the local civic heating system. Residents pay a monthly fixed charge toward this wether they use it or not. This is slightly wasteful as many residents have the heating on all the time.

The balconies suffer from a pigeon nusence. They make an mess which is why many residents block their balcony with windows or netting. Other Blocks of this type in the city which have been refurbished and reclad, loose their balconies but gain an extra bank of built in double glazed windows. The balconies all have a rubbish chute in the back corner and a kick panel at the front for a fire escape hatch into next door.

Here is the view from Herdings bus terminus looking North West past the cluster toward the city centre. The Towers are exactly 1 mile as the crow flies from this location and town centre is 2½ miles.

The Callow cluster consists of 296 flats in the 6 towers.

Here is an external website explaining the latest woodchip burning boiler which heats them

The Blocks are arranged as follows.

Clockwise from the tallest block at the top of the hill with the most floors named Callow