Let’s begin a story about Local Environment with a song! This is from The Stirrings in Sheffield, a local musical!
To be a Sheffield grinder, it is no easy trade,
There’s more than you’d imagine to the grinding of a blade.
The strongest man among us is old at 32,
There’s few who brave such hardships as we poor grinders do!
The Porter
Start at Ringinglow, out in the moors above Sheffield, follow the Porter from its source through Porter Clough, past Forge Dam and onwards past several other dams. The Porter was dammed many times to build up heads of water to drive the millstones that caused slow death through dust inhalation and fast death from fragments detached from spinning stones. In Whitely Woods there’s the sole surviving grinding workshop with the cogs and belts that drove the industry on which Sheffield flourished.
By now the path is the old toll road and passes with the river through Endcliffe Park to Hunters Bar. So called because it is where the toll bar was, now situated on the traffic island across from the park gates.
Following the Porter from here is harder because much of it is culverted. Eventually it flows into the River Sheaf under platform 5 of Sheffield Midland Station.
Hunters Bar
This is where I want to rest for a moment. It’s where I was born and brought up. When I was very small my mother took me to feed the ducks on one of the dams in the park.
I remember many shops around Hunters Bar as far back as the 50s. A few are unchanged in terms of what they sell if not ownership. In those days Hunters Bar was inner city, going on leafy suburb. (Not so leafy these days since the local authority declared war on street trees.) I remember loads of grocers, greengrocers, butchers, fishmongers and even a wool shop!
The demographics changed as students moved into the area. Some stayed on and so there are young families. Plenty of artists, craftspeople and self-employed. Shops opened to sell their goods and cater for lone workers. More recently the demographics shifted again, as students move into the city centre, where purpose-built student accommodation draws them out of private rentals.
Hunters Bar will be OK. It’s a go-to destination if you’ve a half day off work. A stroll in the park, a coffee at a non-chain shop and pick up a present or something interesting for tea. There’s somewhere like this in most cities.
The traders meet and promote the area. A pasta shop opened a few years ago and the food shops agreed to not sell pasta. If the pasta shop works out, it increases footfall for all. Together they organise a quarterly market on Sharrow Vale Road, where most of the shops are.
Local Environment: My Story
The local economy cannot be described solely in spreadsheet terms. It has history and geography; people and relationships. Transactions are human and financial, mutual and often costly to businesses. The trees the council cut down matter as much to the local economy as the success of some business. This is a place I’ve known all my life. I am keenly aware of its history. Its story is my story.
Can you describe your local economy in similar terms?
Dig down through Sharrow Vale Road and you’ll find its foundations on the bones of Sheffield’s grinders, in their turn buried on the flood plain of the Porter.
LOCKDOWN POSTSCRIPT
This post was written about 17 months ago and it shows. The loss of the trees, although tragic, is as nothing compared with the loss of custom for many of the shops that make this area what it is.
However, the implications of the lockdown for local businesses is well-understood and so I won’t focus on it. I want to focus on the trees … and the river and history.
Hunters Bar is not solely a collection of eccentric traders. It’s a distinctive place, a part of the city known and valued by many. This is down to its environment, the park and the roundabout and the streets with what’s left of the trees.
Two Economies
Contrast this with Spital Hill and Ellesmere Green. The disadvantages there are not lack of entrepreneurial spirit so much as poor environment. It’s not a place that attracts visitors and this translates into disadvantage for business. Attempts have been made over decades to enhance Ellesmere Green but overall it still looks run down despite economic activity increasing over the last 10 years or so.
Ellesmere Green depends on local residents while Hunters Bar draws in people from all over the city. Paradoxically, Hunters Bar will be more damaged footfall fell with the lockdown. Ellesmere Green less so where most shops seem open.
My prediction is Hunters Bar will recover because its environment is still there. Some businesses will go down of course but there’s a rapid turnover at any time and so in a few years it’ll be the same but different.
Premises change hands less frequently at Ellesmere Green and whilst a few have closed, most continue much as they always have. It’ll always develop slowly because it does not attract visitors to the same extent.
They both have strengths but note the impact of environment on both economies.
Why I do this
Stories rarely remain unchanged, the context in which they’re told matters just as much as the context referred to by the story. I wrote this sequence of 21 stories about 17 months ago. You may have read some or all of them in their earlier form. Reading them now, we perhaps see something different, especially as we consider the impact of the lockdown on the local economy.
As I republish these stories, I revise and polish them. Some need little change, for others the changes are extensive. At the end of each story, I add reflections based on where my thinking has moved onto, in the context of Lockdown.
This is story 13/21. Last Story: Participation: Cottingham Blues Next Story: Profit: “It’s where your feet are!”