The Flickr Em1Loco Image Generatr

* A set of 'Then & Now' pieces with the past imagery provided by Adrian Wynn, with permission, during the period of great changes in the Sheffield area, 1982-1992.
** Hoyle Street. K. M. Autos, 1990.

Think this last shot is my second favourite and one which only got included at the end as I was reluctant to leave such a picture out of this set, the reason for this was that Adrian had departed to the antipodes for a few weeks, so it was a case of e-mailing him and finding out the exact location, the picture only indicating 'Hoyle Street, 1990'. Much of Hoyle Street has now gone and was turned into the dual carriageway, Netherthorpe Road, with the double-track Supertram route running up the middle of the 4 lanes to the University roundabout from the other large roundabout at Shalesmoor at the bottom of the hill. Only about 200m of Hoyle Street now remains, right at the bottom of Netherthorpe Road where it used to intersect directly with Infirmary Road to Hillsborough and the picture was indeed taken on that section, but which way. Having got the details from Adrian, basking in warm, but on that day, very wet New Zealand weather, a trip out on Tuesday this week revealed miraculously, what looked like part of the 1990 building surviving and being used in somewhat the same way as the 1990 picture on the right; as the automobile business, K.M. Autos.! I was gobsmacked when Adrian agreed this was not only the right direction for the shot but looked as if some of the brickwork had been re-used for the new premises, 'Cars Corner', rather prosaic considering its position, but now not having to indicate, 'we are nothing to do with next door'!. Now, next door has gone, or maybe K.M. (Kevin's) Autos has gone but this is the sole remaining building on this side of what is now the only small section of Hoyle Street, left at the bottom of Netherthorpe Road. To the right is Doncaster Street and the Daniel Doncaster Cementation furnace, some details from Adrian's now deleted, but will be under redesign this year, Flickr site-
'...This is the last remaining intact example which was built in 1848 and was last fired in 1951', further 'it is the only example of its type and was built by Daniel Doncaster & Sons and used a process developed by the Germans in the 1600s and used a technique of placing wrought iron with charcoal in large stone chests sealed with 'piecrust' or 'wheelswarf', a sludge of sandstone & steel dust, and firing the whole lot up to red heat for a total period of around two weeks. The wrought iron would absorb the carbon and be turned into steel; the iron never becoming molten but just soft. The impurities would form bubbles of gas and created blisters on the surface and it is for this reason that the material was called 'Blister Steel'...
Beyond 'CArs Corner' further east, some of the new development and a trio of the 'forest of cranes' which are now in this area, part of the conversion, refurbishment and redevelopment of old industrial buildings which will see much of Sheffield's original industrial heartland disappear, being replace by buildings for modern usage. The graffiti'd building in the background is advertised as 'Demolition Pending' up for sale and redevelopment but that, apparently, has been the case for some while, it is another 'nice' building but the cost of renovation may be just too much; and there are quite a few more contenders in the area as well, all very large of course. There was 'no one at home' when in the area for a couple of hours around Tuesday lunchtime as I had wanted to talk with the proprietor to see if they had any recollection of the building's history, but no luck. There were plenty of 'autos' around but no activity and the gates were locked with no sign of recent life... maybe 'Cars Corner' has turned a corner, plus the small parcel of land it sites on must be worth quite a bit as well; the website address just produces a blank page.

* A set of 'Then & Now' pieces with the past imagery provided by Adrian Wynn, with permission, during the period of great changes in the Sheffield area, 1982-1992.
** Meadow Well Street. Samuel Pearce & Sons Ltd., Steelworks. 1992.

Samuel Pearce & Sons Ltd., Steelworks, with its canary yellow roller door can be seen on the right in the 1992 picture taken from Adria Wynn's book, 'A View of Sheffield' published in 2007. This is yet another place in the area where some careful rejuvenation is in progress, turning old, now derelict Victorian terraced houses and works, into comfortable dwellings and retaining, where possible, the 'charm' of the area. Both lines of properties in these pictures and being re-used with as much of their character in tact as possible and an example can be seen in the left hand picture, taken on the 8th October last year, where apart from the 'new-builds' on the left, lower down, the block has been up-dated and re-furbished for modern living. The yellow roller-doors have now gone and in their stead, another wonderful strip of miserable, but now old, palisade fence has been erected across the doorway which once led into Samuel Pearce's works. Through the doorway, Well Meadow St continues to the right and in the video mentioned earlier, this area has now changed into 2 or 3 new businesses including, at the end of the street, the 'Hot Chilli' food establishment. It also looks, from the position of the 'lean-too' building in the 1992 picture, that the end section of the terrace has been demolished sometime in the intervening 26 years as there is now a gap between the last house and the still extant 'lean-too', the latter now included as part of the fenced off section at the bottom. Much of the 'new build', here in the Netherthorpe area, is similar to that seen in the left-hand contemporary picture, on the on the right-hand side; also much of being given over to accommodation, student and otherwise, as the University of Sheffield and the NHS's Hallamshire hospital complex is a short walk away with the Supertram tracks just over the fences to the left.

* A set of 'Then & Now' pieces with the past imagery provided by Adrian Wynn, with permission, during the period of great changes in the Sheffield area, 1982-1992.
** Love Street. Cherry Flan cafe, close to the Britannia Metal Plate Works, 1992.

Have to say that this another of my favourites, the juxtaposition of the Cafe name, 'Cherry Flan', and the devastation surrounding it, in the 'Then' picture on the right, from 1992. The contemporary shot has been taken from the same viewpoint but the cafe has been demolished, the one poking into the picture on the right-hand side, with one of my posters adorning the shutter on the window, is on Water St. Opposite that was the Britannia Metal Plate Works where the empty car park is now situated, the 'Cherry Flan' was on Spring St. which ran between the Cafe and the far end of the Britannia Works, so that the cafe's location was between where the dark, 'JC', van is parked underneath the lamp-standard and the brown fence. In the background, beyond the brown fence, the tall building was once the old Sheffield Workhouse, then 'The Doss House' and now, 'Mayfair Court', of course and the roof of this building, taken from a slightly different spot along the road in Adrian's 1992 picture, pokes up above the Cherry Flan', its private Car Park, though that looks disused by this time and possibly a dumping ground for broken down vehicles. On the far left in the 1992 picture, 'TDR Transmission Engineering', manufacture of bearings, gears, gearing and driving elements, has advertised itself on the wall, high up above the corrugated, sky-blue building and TDR are still in business, but have moved to another premises. The white and blue poster, on the wall next to where the cast iron 'Love St' road sign can be seen, appears to be advertising a Radio network, '... for You .... Two FM', maybe Radio Two but this is an odd place to have such a poster for that middle-of-the-road music channel, I would have thought. To balance up the lack of interesting posters in the current picture, taken again on 3rd September last year, 2017, one of those 'bits and bobs' I tend to collect on my wanderings around, this time its a poster advertising the 'Lady Boys of Bangkok' in 'Red Hot Kisses', who were 'performing' at the Sabai Pavilion on Devonshire Street in Sheffield, from Sunday 23rd November to Saturday 6th December in 2014, tickets from UKP18... this item had been awaiting a usage in some picture at some stage... and this was it! In 1992, the road surfaces in Sheffield looked like they do in Adrian's picture and they remained like this until a few years ago when, under the auspices of 'Amey Engineering', the massive Road Refurbishment program got underway and is now almost complete; the change has been remarkable for a place once known as 'Pot-hole City'.

* A set of 'Then & Now' pieces with the past imagery provided by Adrian Wynn, with permission, during the period of great changes in the Sheffield area, 1982-1992.
** Burnaby Street. Housing redevelopment, Walkley, 1982.

This one was an intriguing shot to try and find the location where the 1982 picture was taken from and only by walking along the road, up the bank, as it were, at Walkley, was the angle of the white building in the background, to the left of the derelict house, matched to the 'Now' shot, taken again on the 8th of October, last year. In the 1982 picture, a shadow is being cast off the left side of the U-shaped block of flats, Regent Court, alongside Holme Lane at Hillsborough. The shadow on that day is cast at around 45 degrees from the side part of the building and not until the camera was well over to the north-west, along near to a now cut-off section of Burnaby Street, on Lonsdale Lane where a stair down the hill showed the exact angle of the Regent Court flats. In light of the fact that Adrian informs me that this whole area was under heavy re-development, there is almost nothing in either picture which matches in the foreground. Even the two new-build houses, to the left of the prominent one being knocked down in the centre, can not be seen in the present view; they look brand new, at the time, but must have been obscured from the view by many other houses, built in this area since the large demolition process took place in the 1980s. The angles which are subtended by both the wings of the Regent Court flats is the same in both pictures but as there was no direct sunlight in the 'Now' scene, no strong shadow is cast on the left-hand wing of the flats, which is a shame, but even so, the shape and geometry of the building matches rather well. I can imagine like me, Adrian found this a convenient, high, perch from which to take his picture with no obstructions in the way... Still not completely convinced that my shot is at the right angle but needs to be as bit more over to the, left, north-west to make the angle of the left-hand side of the white flats, match more correctly... whatever, the scene has changed dramatically in this shot, bot in terms of 'new' housing, replacing the slums of the 60s and 70s and in terms of a more pronounced 'greening' of the area; but knowing Adrian I guess his shot was taken when the 'greenery' was at its minimum, in the late Autumn or early Spring. Nice cast iron fireplace been left in the partly demolished building in the right picture, how times have changed, that wouldn't stand a chance of staying in place for long these days though the other already look to have been 'removed'!

* A set of 'Then & Now' pieces with the past imagery provided by Adrian Wynn, with permission, during the period of great changes in the Sheffield area, 1982-1992.
** Langsett Road. 'The Masons Arms' public house with, then, no Supertram tracks. 1990

The idea to present these 'Then & Now' stills came from the video,
www.flickr.com/photos/daohaiku/27738573699/
published in the Autumn of last year, which showed a series of pictures taken around the Shalesmoor/Neepsend and Hillsborough area of Sheffield, the whole prompted, in part, by pictures from Adrian Wynn's excellent book, 'A View of Sheffield', published by Pickard Communications in 2007. This book contains images from the dramatically changing scene in Sheffield between the years 1982 and 1992, a decade which saw a huge decline in the traditional heavy industries in, not only Sheffield, but the whole area. Further, as a skilled roofer during this period, Adrian had a unique vantage from which to take many of the images in the book, but it is a shame that this period was just at the dawn of easily accessible, light, digital camera technology and so the pictures shown here in the 'Then' section had to be taken on far less convenient film camera; also less convenient was the number of shots permitted before the days of 'cheap pixels' came along, 5-10 years later.
So, In this series of seven pieces, the selection of what to include was based on whether there was any remaining evidence of the connection between the the past and present pictures, with shots taken for their own merit and as far as possible taken from the same viewpoint, which for these 7, the latter was easy to identify. Working inwards, as it were, from the Hillsborough end and terminating at the bottom end of what is now Netherthorpe Road, ex-Hoyle Street when Adrian was taking his shots, the 'street clutter', in terms of poles, signs, threats and warnings, weren't as extensive and at the latter date, 1992, not even the Supertram system was up and running, something which started operations around 2 years later. So, this first in the series, taken just east of the old Army barracks at Hillsborough, now the Morrisons Supermarket area of shops, on Langsett Road. At left is the picture taken on the 3rd of September last year and shows the refurbished 'Masons Arms' on the left with the now cleared derelict site for 'New Shops', shown on the board over the window in the picture on the right, now occupied with a small terrace of 3-storey flats. On the right, Adrian's 1990 picture, with just a single lamp-standard, no Supertram tracks and its associated paraphernalia, no parking space and single carriageways for vehicular traffic; looks like a sunnier day as well, compared to the 'Now' picture on the left taken in early September. That year, 1990, had seen the Conservative government re-elected with John Major replacing Margaret Thatcher as leader and now Prime Minister. The Conservatives had been in power since 1979 and many think had caused untold damage and hardships in these parts; some of which still exist today. It was easy then, I guess, to find political comment in this area and the words on the two boards on the old shops say it all-
'For Thou Can not Worship Both Money and The Lord. Evil Thatcher. Pension Snatcher'
and on the right,-
'For God's Sake, Vote Labour'.
As far as I can make out, the shop once belonged to Wallis's and was some form of food or grocery 'Value' discount store and below, fly-posting, be interested to know what was being advertised... some sort of music festival in Sheffield, the city name identifiable at the bottom of the poster. I guess what is also really different about the two shots is that one of the characters on the left is on his mobile phone and the other, although carrying it is, remarkably, just 'looking around'; it not usually being like this and somewhat of a surprise that all three of them weren't concentrating on some important international news on their 'gizmos'. They seem to have ignored the 'Masons Arms' blackboard which advertises, 'Wet Your Whistle Wednesday', even though this was taken on a quiet Sunday morning...

* A set of 'Then & Now' pieces with the past imagery provided by Adrian Wynn, with permission, during the period of great changes in the Sheffield area, 1982-1992.
** Cornish Street. George Barnsley & Sons, Cornish Works. 1992.

A happy chance, or 'Serendipity', as once again, human/foreground interest was added to the 'Now' picture seen here on the left and taken again on the 8th of October last year, 2017. Just after wondering along Cornish Street, looking for the point at which Adrian Wynn had taken his in 1992, twas another busy year, photographically and otherwise, for him I expect, and the search had started at the other side of the house on the corner. Although not sure which way the camera was pointing, in 1992, at this stage, the point-of-view didn't look right, but after walking along the street where George Barnsley & Sons had his Cornish Works, on the right and are still extant, but now derelict, on turning around it was obvious, seeing the chimney in the background poking out above the detached house, that the position was just about spot on; and just in time, for along came woman and child, slowly gliding by on their bike. More evidence of the state of Sheffield's roads can be seen in both the 'Then' & 'Now' pictures and, in addition, parking has become much more restricted. Apart from that, the scene has changed very little, the more modern building on the left is still there, this is 'Westpack', packaging British Industry is their forte, and the building looks to have change not at all in the intervening period. This can also be said of the George Barnsley & Sons, Cornish Works, on the opposite side of the Street which has seen a more severe blocking up of the windows and doors compared to the 1992 version od plywood sheeting and with the glass in the upstairs windows still unbroken. The lower section of the cast-iron drain-pipe has been stolen, presumably for scrap and the lighting has been changed from concrete post and yellow sodium, to what looks like a more ornate lighting post which will, one assumes, get changed again when Amey come around and do the roads, as the lighting will be from a blue-white, intense LED array, with upwards lighting shield to prevent light pollution of the sky.. The chimney is sat in the old Cornish Place yard and this area has been given over to small businesses occupying the old premises which were formerly the factory of James Dixon & Sons, a Britannia metal, Sheffield plate and Cutlery manufacturer; the buildings were refurbished in the late 1990s and jolly nice it all looks too and right alongside the River Don. The pressure on buildings like the one on the right, must now be enormous as there are redevelopments and refurbishments going on all over this area, converting old Victorian heavy industrial buildings into more modern premises for accommodation, business, the cafe culture and recreational pursuits; the jibs of many a tall crane, involved in all this, are only a short distance away, it can't be much longer now...
see the Bcd-Ubex, Urban Exploration website-
www.bcd-urbex.com/george-barnsley-sons-cornish-works-shef...
for more information and pictures taken inside the building. The details there say these works continued until 2003 when the doors finally closed but it looks a bit 'closed' in the 'Then' picture from 1992! but--
'...In 1973 the company ceased making files as they were no longer profitable with the loss of 60 jobs. It was a hard decision to make as George Barnsley had started the company by making files. Files were bought in at first and sold on but this was soon stopped. The decline of George Barnsley and Sons was beginning. The next 30 years were hard for the company with more imports and the competition becoming fiercer. Sadly the company closed in 2003 and the buildings sold. These now sit empty and almost forgotten with an uncertain future...'
this from-
www.aworldinruins.co.uk/george-barnsley--sons

* A set of 'Then & Now' pieces with the past imagery provided by Adrian Wynn, with permission, during the period of great changes in the Sheffield area, 1982-1992.
** Bardwell Street. The Woodhead line, Neepsend, 1982.

Moving only a short distance away and now in the area where once there were class EM1 and EM2 locos taking heavy coal trains and passengers from the east to the west of the Pennines, with empty coal trains back and passengers from Manchester to London via Sheffield Victoria. In the 'Then' picture on the right, taken by Adrian Wynn in 1982, now 35 years ago, the prominent feature in the background of his picture, are the still extant gantries and overhead line equipment for the electrified, at 1500VDC, line between Rotherwood Exchange Sidings and Wath in the east, via the Woodhead Tunnel and over to Manchester Piccadilly in the west. As we know, this line was finally closed passenger traffic in 1970 and 11 years later to all traffic in July 1981 with the removal of much of the infrastructure taking place in the mid-1980s. At the time of this picture in 1982, not sure of the month, but it looks fairly early or late on in the year. The wires are still up and it was during this time that the diesel passenger service from and too Huddersfield still ran via Penistone along the section of track through the upper Don Vally via Oxspring, Wortley, Deepcar, Oughtibridge, Neepsend, Bridgehouses and through Sheffield Victoria, closed in the 1970s, the diesel units then having to make a reversal at Woodburn Junction and so on down into Sheffield Midland. All passenger services had been diverted to Midland when the line from Manchester closed for passenger traffic and the direct diesel service via Penistone only ran for a short while, before it too was diverted to run through Barnsley and so approach Sheffield Midland via Meadowhall; a much longer, though pleasant way around. The rails were all then finally removed as was all the valuable line side and over-head copper cables which were sold to the Germans; the scrap which resulted from all the rest of the steelwork must have been colossal and it would be interesting to know how much of the initial UKP11.5 million, which the Woodhead electrification, including the over 4 million cost of the new Woodhead Tunnel, was recouped through the sale of all the materials and, only, 27 years of operation. The 7, EM2, passenger locomotives went to Holland and performed well there for years and although the original EM1, 'Tommy', was, amazingly, scrapped, one of the other locos, 26020, made at Gorton Works in 1951, in black livery and lined in red, is kept in preservation at the National Railway Museum, next to York Station, in York City centre; 26020 was never named...
Enough of that, comparing the two pictures, the present one taken on 8th October last year, the scene again looks very similar, a new LED lamp standard having already been installed here on the left and some of the buildings in the left-foreground having been taken down. The gas/water pipe across the road has gone but the buildings on the right are the same and there is now a line of lovely birch trees, with the odd willow tree thrown in for good measure, growing along the single track section of the last part of the Woodhead line. The line, which has been largely re-aligned during the past, runs between the old Sheffield Victoria station site and to just north of Deepcar where there is a set of exchange sidings at Ellen Wood allowing the loco to drop off the billets, for the rolling mills at the old Samuel Fox, now Stocksbridge Works, the loco then picking up flat-bed wagons of rolled material for transport back to Aldwarke U.E.S. The road which runs under the bridge continues up to Parkwood Springs, home to the defunct Dry Ski Slope and between this road and Rutland Road, just off to the right, a little east of here and at the other side of the line, was the Neepsend Engine Shed. On this side of the line and off to the left, just beyond the line of trees, were the Neepsend Gas Works and beyond that alongside the line, the Neepsend Power Station, the line then heading north towards Wadsley Bridge and the woodlands of Beeley and Wharncliffe side..