Sheffield history: Kelvin Flats became a 'crime-plagued symbol of a Sixties architectural dream gone wrong'

When Kelvin Flats first opened on Infirmary Road in 1969 they were hailed as the answer to the slums they replaced.

But by September 1994, the now notorious 13-storey complex had become a crumbling, crime-plagued symbol of a Sixties architectural dream gone wrong.

Its long wind-swept corridors were empty, litter billowed where children once played, howling gales the only sound where happy voices echoed.

The flats had been marred by tragedy. A four-year-old boy had fallen to his death from one of them shortly after the first families moved in.

It was one of the most unpopular places in Sheffield to live – residents had voted overwhelmingly for their demolition at a series of public meetings in September 1992.

Demolition began in March 1995 – started by, of all people, MP Ann Widdecombe, who, long before her Strictly Come Dancing days, was Minister for Sheffield – and before the end of that year the flats had been completely flattened.

The eyesore was gone, condemned as a badly designed concrete jungle, falling apart and riddled with vandalism and crime.

But it hadn’t always been like that

In the Sixties, it wasn’t uncommon for 33 people living in 10 slum houses in Kelvin’s grey, terraced streets to share three outside toilets. They laughed at talk of ‘bathrooms’ – they knew they would have to boil water before a decent wash in the kitchen sink.

The flats – which replaced around 800 houses which had been on the site – helped do away with some of that squalor but they brought problems of their own.

Residents felt isolated, cut off from their neighbours, communities were lost – and the rot set in.

Kelvin cost £3.5 million to build and cost £1.8m to tear down. To bring them up to scratch and save them would have cost a staggering £45m.

Who knows, if they’d been saved they may have become listed like Park Hill, loved and loathed in equal measure by the people of Sheffield.

As demolition day approached, just two people were still living on the vast 947-flat complex.

A TV flickering or a mysterious bang in the early hours were the only things to remind one of them he was not alone on the sprawling complex.

The 64-year-old, who had lived in his first-storey Kelvin Walk flat for more than four years told me – the intrepid young reporter tasked with finding the final folk still living in the flats: “It is a bit lonely now, especially when you think how you’re the only one on the corridor. I want to get out. I have been happy, there’s been no problems. The flats are comfortable.”

He had been offered a new property but reckoned it was no better than his Kelvin home.

The final tenant moved out in October 1994.

By then, 2,500 grateful people had been rehoused from the flats.

As Miss Widdecombe told the readers of The Star: “When they were first built in the 1960s the flats were seen as a model for the city’s future.

“Thirty years on, we know that people want to live on a more human scale.”

Marian Day paid a final welcome farewell to the flats with a blast of The Last Post on demolition day.

“I saw these flats being built and I’ll see them coming down,” she said. “I will be glad when they’re gone – they were nothing but a waste of money.”