Carl makes plea for his beloved city to be no place like clone
Lecturer Carl Lee wanted to write a book to find out why Sheffield is such a great place to live. The result is also a plea for the city to retain its individuality
CARL Lee is one of those people, and there are many of them, who came to study in Sheffield and never left.
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Born and raised in Bedfordshire, he headed north in 1982 to take up a "not very highly coveted place at Sheffield City Polytechnic".
With a geography degree under his belt, he realised it was too late to flee back south. "I was smitten. I was a Sheffielder. It's just that nobody local would believe me for a couple of decades."
A lecturer at Sheffield College for the past 14 years, his passion for his adopted city is now expressed in Home, A Personal Geography of Sheffield.
Inevitably, it is rooted in a geographer's sense of place and context but the book is much more than that. It captures the spirit of the city – the characters, the history, the environmental and urban fabric and the peculiarities that add up to "one of the best-kept secrets in Britain".
Moreover, it's an argument, against a background of change and uncertainty, for Sheffield to retain its radicalism and identity, resisting any aspirations to become a "clone town".
The book is based on living in Sheffield over a year in 2008, capturing "the ordinary, the everyday and even the mundane".
Events in Lee's life prompt a string of ruminations. The death in January of a close friend, another student who came to Sheffield and never left, evokes memories of the days when the polytechnic set up base in of Britain's grandest country homes, Wentworth Woodhouse, and the joys of the Round Walk.
The funeral is a green burial at Wisewood cemetery, leading to reflections on the Loxley Valley as the scene of the 1864 flood and where developers now "covetously eye the old industrial sites for housing".
A college lecturers' strike is not only a chance to recall the miners' strike, but also the eight-and-a-half-year dispute at the Keetons engineering factory – "the ultimate expression of a longstanding propensity of Sheffield folk to organise and agitate for the interests of labour".
As a member of the Labour Party, Lee talks Sheffield with MP David Blunkett, former council leader Jan Wilson and 'Mr Sheffield Labour Party' Paul Blomfield.
He is canvassing one Sunday afternoon on an estate at Gleadless when a dressing gown-clad woman points to weeds in the pavement. "'I've rung those bastards to do something about these weeds, but do they ever come and do it?'
"'Madam,' I said, 'consider it done.' I turned heel, pulling up the weeds as I went, and put them in her bin. 'Oi! Who said you could put them in my bin?'"
April brings a derby at Bramall Lane – "football not for the faint-hearted" – a few weeks after the death of Derek Dooley. They are cues to recall the influence of Sir Charles Clegg and his brother Sir William, who dominated Sheffield's footballing and political life for five decades, and to reflect on the Hillsborough Disaster.
During Euro '96, Lee put up three Danish fans while their team played in Sheffield. They drank beer at breakfast and, like their host, were taken aback by the beauty of the Peak District rubbing shoulders with an industrial city.
They also praised the local health services after one of them broke his ankle falling off a dancing podium at the Leadmill.
The shape of Sheffield, its hills and rivers, is used to explain its industrial history. In the Lower Don Valley, Lee visits Sheffield Forgemasters where he is mightily impressed by the recent turnaround in its fortunes.
The city may have lost 100,000 manufacturing jobs between 1971 and 2001 but "industry is far from dead in Sheffield. Forgemasters is one example, a major example, of the tenacious ability of Sheffield industry not simply to hang on but to continue to thrive."
Lady's Bridge is a starting point for the Five Weirs Walk through the East End. The bridge, it is noted, contains elements over 500 years old and is now forever immortalised by local musician Richard Hawley.
Lee describes him as "a very Sheffield sort of star, a musician who values graft and craft more than celebrity", and is surprised that he agrees to a meeting. "I'm amazed he can spare me the time. After all, who the chuff am I?"
They meet in Fagan's pub in Broad Lane, "which retains just about every virtue of being a classic boozer."
The outcome was less clear. "Now it would be great to impart some significant insights from the soul of a great artist but really I guessed we just got pissed and talked all sorts of nonsense."
Yet some of Hawley's observations struck a chord.
"The estates of houses, all the same, street after street and the conformity of working-class life created a desire amongst some to strive for something more individual, to be different."
The book follows some of the big debates of 2008 – the proposed relocation of St Luke's Hospice to Norton Nurseries, the demolition of the Tinsley cooling towers, the doubts over the St Paul's tower of apartments...
It hits the buttons on the machine marked Made in Sheffield: the Pyjama Jump, Henderson's Relish, Rare & Racy, Pete McKee...
They could only be pressed by somebody who has grown to love the city and appreciate its nuances.
Why did he decide to write the book?
"I wanted to write a geography book for people who wouldn't normally read a geography book.
"I also wanted to try and get to the heart of why Sheffield was such a great place to live. I've thought the city is one of the best-kept secrets of Britain.
"I've had a go at exploring the ingredients that make up the city and contribute to it being such a great place to live.
"Over the years I've had nothing but help from all sorts of people in the city.
"I hope that Sheffield can continue to be the radical city that shaped its creation, now more than ever we need to think about alternatives to the discredited status quo.
"Sheffield was one of the first industrial cities in the world, one of the first to de-industrialise, and hopefully the city which leads us into a greener, more equal and more sustainable future."
Home, A Personal Geography of Sheffield, by Carl Lee, Fou Fou Publishing, 185 Sandford Grove Road, Sheffield, S7 1RS. Price 9.95.
The book will be launched tomorrow, Saturday, from noon at Rare & Racy in Devonshire Street. There will be wine and jazz at the event.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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