We don't want Sheffield looking like Milton Keynes

Meanwhile, brigades of local citizenry, all wearing Save the Pepper Pot T-shirts, are preparing to sit down in front of the Bethel Chapel in Cambridge Street to save it from the Hammerson bulldozers.

Another campaign to save old Sheffield is reaching its climax. And then the Diary wakes up.

It was only a dream.

You may have read the story here yesterday on the successful campaign 25 years ago to save St Paul's Parade from the developers.

But there's an eerie silence this time around to save 46 buildings on Cambridge Street and thereabouts from a similar fate.

Howard, vice chairman of the Hallamshire Historic Buildings Society, local historian Ron Clayton and a few other good folk with their heritage hair shirts, are lone voices in the wilderness.

To them, the city council has sealed a 500 million pact with the devil, aka Hammersons, for the New Retail Quarter which will mean a fate worse than death.

Howard, standing in front of the 'Pepper Pot Building' at the corner of Pinstone and Cambridge Street, due to come down, spells out the full horror.

"This could only happen in Sheffield because all the other cities are trying to preserve their heritage. If you want tourists to come, does anyone want to come to a town looking like Milton Keynes or Basingstoke?"

Most of those threatened buildings, he said in a recent letter to The Star, are still serviceable. They include the Bethel Chapel, built 1852, whose Grade II listing turns out not to be worth the paper it is written on.

The NRQ will be, he says, "one of the biggest orgies of mass destruction in Sheffield since the Blitz."

Sadly, he's got little support. Not even English Heritage will lift a finger to save the buildings. Seen from London, many may seem unremarkable.

Seen from Sheffield, they're some of the best we have left.

The long parade of buildings overlooking the Peace Gardens are just a facade but look good, says Howard. Surely they could do the same with Cambridge Street even if it meant trimming the profits?

It's not the only battle the society has on its hands. But attempts to list the old neo-Georgian Bluecoats School (1911) on the Hallam University Psalter Lane campus have also fallen on deaf English Heritage ears.

The Diary strolls up Cambridge Street and Cross Burgess Street and the buildings do look run down but that's because they've got Developers' Disease.

Howard says he's not an old stick in the mud. He likes some modern buildings, such as the Seventies fire station. Ironically, that's coming down as well.

"I have been assured by the powers-that-be that the quality of the architecture will be wonderful but I have heard that all before," he adds.

Howard has seen the future and it's Milton Keynes.

To read Howard's full argument click here.