Heeley City Farm: Sheffield community swept away for relief road that never came

The image shows tightly-packed houses with washing drying in the back gardens. Opposite a poster advertising Park Drive cigarettes, another urges smokers to give up.

Despite a determined fightback by the residents, the demolition swept away houses, shops and pubs but the bypass plan was eventually abandoned.

In 1981, a large part of that land found a new purpose as Heeley City Farm. Heeley People’s Park reused the rest. Only the outline of some streets remains of that once vibrant community.

Three decades later, an archaeological investigation into life on those roads was led by the farm’s community heritage manager, Sally Rodgers.

It recorded poignant reminders of the people who once lived there, left behind in the cellars buried under a field where the goats now graze.

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