Sheffield retro: How West Bar - which dates back to medieval times - has changed over the years

It is an exciting project to regenerate an area that has been largely forgotten and derelict for over a decade and a half but before that it had a rich 200 year history as part of Sheffield’s city centre combining its first heavy industrial quarter and also its premier popular party zone.

The site is bounded by three streets -West Bar, named for a toll gate which once marked the edge of the pre-industrial town – Bridge Street, a historic coach road into town from the medieval Lady’s Bridge and once known as ‘Under the Water’ due to frequent flooding and Corporation Street initially known as ’ Steam Street ‘ due to the presence of some of Sheffield’s earliest revolutionary steam powered factories.

Up to the late 18th century it had been an area of market gardens known as the Colston Crofts, an era now only recalled by Plum Lane. The only signs of industry then were the Town Corn Mill on nearby Mill Sands and the Silk Mill situated on modern day Alma St, both powered by water from the Kelham Goyt which created Kelham Island. The town’s first workhouse was also situated on West Bar – this wasn’t perhaps the most desirable area.

In the early 19th century the Crofts were rapidly built over as new steam-powered rolling mills, breweries, grinding shops, foundries and dozens of other businesses sprang up cheek by jowl with courtyards of cramped and unhealthy back-to-back workers’ housing. The factories included Vickers and Sons, corn millers who lucratively switched from corn to bell founding and then even more profitably to shell founding becoming a multi-national armaments giant, the ancestor of modern day Forgemasters and the nuclear submarine makers in Barrow who still carry their name.

The Soho Wheel, a steam-powered grinding shop on Bridge St, took its name not from London’s red light area but from James Watt’s celebrated Birmingham factory where the building of industrial steam engines was perfected. The apparently romantic Love Street was sadly actually named after a sawmaker! The Britannia Works also on Love St, was originally a silver plating works but later became home to sweet maker Henry Dixon, famous for its Yorkshire Mixture sweets still made in Sheffield. A by-product of the sizeable new population, living in cramped homes but with Friday wages to spend was the emergence of West Bar from the 1840s as the rumbustious centre of popular entertainment for Sheffield offering a succession of beer houses, boxing taverns, circuses, music halls, theatres, zoos and later cinemas which on a Saturday night would have made today’s West Street look positively funeral.

Famous venues included the Spinks Nest, the Royal Casino, the Surrey Music Hall and the Packhorse Inn. The king of the area at its Victorian height was Tommy Youdan, theatrical impresario, Town Councillor and philanthropist.

Surrey, located roughly where the Crown Courts now stand – famously and predictably-burnt down after an all too realistic show called the Great Fire of London in which the stage set was set aflame on a twice-nightly basis.

From the end of the Great War music hall was hit by first cinema, then radio and TV. Slum clearance in the 1920s removed most residents, the now forgotten Bridge St Bus Station replaced the Packhorse. Heavy industry began to close down in the 1980s as Whitbread's Brewery and Millsands Rolling mills closed, and road widening to provide an interim Inner Ring Road along Bridge Street and West Bar removed remains of the last music hall, shops and pubs and cut the area off.

Although the mid-90s saw the New Crown, and Family Courts built on West Bar they stood gloriously isolated from the city centre across a busy dual carriageway in an urban wasteland. The last place of entertainment, the Don Picture House, disappeared behind yellow cladding to become Armadillo Storage Warehouse. The last pub on West Bar, the Moseley Arms, became a solicitors office. But the fondly remembered Woollens Signs continued to fly its highly visible rooftop banner improbably among the ruins. However in the early 2000s the Council’s city centre master plans began to promote the area once again as a key development opportunity to provide mixed employment and housing sites in a new ‘Riverside Business District’ on the formerly industrial north east side of the city.

Towards this goal in 2006-8 the severance created by traffic and dual carriageways was largely removed by rerouting the Inner Ring Road to the other end of the Wicker, bringing most of the central canal and riverside back inside the perceived central area. The former Brewery and Rolling Mills on Millsands were redeveloped for offices and flats along the Don as Exchange Riverside.

The obvious next step was to regenerate the area between West Bar and Bridge St. This the Council promoted through an architect and developer competition, the offer of its own land holdings and support for a compulsory purchase order to assemble the site. Following extensive public consultation Castlemore, a well-established Midlands developer, was selected as the preferred partner and planning got under way.

But unfortunately within two years Castlemore had fallen victim to the 2008 financial crash and their land ownership became entangled in a lengthy liquidation process which lasted several years.

This could have seen the end of the West Bar project but the reins were taken up by regeneration Urbo. Directors Peter Swallow, a well known local developer and Andy Dainty, who had previously been involved in working with the Council to frame the original development brief for West Bar, have gradually pieced the project back together. Together with their architects 5plus and urban designers Urbed, a new master plan was prepared closer in spirit to the original Council brief. Urbo set about buying out Castlemore's interests and gaining a fresh outline planning consent - the basis for the building work now on site. They also formed a partnership with Peveril Securities, the development arm of contractor Bowmer & Kirkland and this joint venture, Urbo (West Bar) Ltd has managed to assemble the entire West Bar site.

In the meantime hundreds of workers and residents already established in Exchange Riverside and Kelham understandably began to call for a better environment and connections to the city centre.

The Council’s response was first at Love Square, an imaginative partnership between Urbo, the Council and the University of Sheffield Landscape School which turned a small part of West Bar site - the abandoned Bridge St bus station - into a ‘pop-up park’ with sitting areas, grass, vigorous floral planting and fruit trees, now supported by a small band of friends. This was followed after 2017 by the much more ambitious and permanent Grey to Green corridor, which in its first .75 km phase turned the redundant dual carriageway on West Bar and Bridge St into an innovative pedestrian-friendly, colourfully flowering, linear park which also serves a flood management function. Further phases have extended the impact up Snig Hill and through Castlegate.

The intervention has helped to transform the image of the area bringing back footfall and giving the Courts and the West Bar site a suitable civic setting. It set the scene for Urbo to announce its new plans. In 2020 Legal and General joined the partnership as a build-to-rent apartment owner and delivery has now begun in earnest. The first £150m phase of development will comprise 200,000 square feet of high spec office space, 368 ‘Build To Rent’ ( ie not student-focused) a multi-storey car park and an acre of public spaces which will further extend the popular Grey to Green approach. In an echo of its happier past there will again be bars, shops and restaurants in West Bar and one of the earliest public spaces will be named Soho Yard and another Plum Lane. Perhaps there may be room for a Steam Street, a Colston Croft or Tommy Youdan’s Bar?

Some sixteen years after the original development competition was conducted the redevelopment of one of the largest remaining vacant sites and possibly the largest ever private investment in a single phase of development in Sheffield City Centre has finally got under way. Andy said: “It is very exciting to be finally delivering a new West Bar after so much work. The area has a long and fascinating history and will again be providing the work, living and leisure space for future generations. When you understand that history it turns out we're really just re-establishing a busy part of the city.”