Chapel Walk: Shop fronts set for £250,000 revamp to bring life back to medieval alley in Sheffield

The Church Burgesses Trust will restore eight shop fronts - five are currently closed - and first floor offices in the Howard Building on Chapel Walk. 

The aim is to attract new businesses and visitors to the walkway which dates back to the Middle Ages but has fallen on hard times.

The money is from Sheffield City Council which notes the Trust would not do the work without it, or it would be delivered over ‘a much longer time frame’.

In 2022, the Trust earned £2m from assets and investments worth £38m, according to the Charity Commission register. 

Now, public money is being spent restoring the historic shop front at VN Nails Salon - which features painted timber colonettes and leaded fanlights - and replicating it across the other seven to create a uniform appearance.

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Other businesses in the strip are Staniforths and Feast sandwich shops, at either end.

A planning application for the works states: “Graffiti, damage to materials, closed shops, and the poor condition of shopfronts detract from the Conservation Area, the various historic buildings along Chapel Walk, and the experience of visitors and shoppers to that area.”

It adds: “The aim is to create a promenade of shops that encourage visitors and shoppers to Chapel Walk.”

Chapel Walk used to be a bustling alley but its fortunes plummeted due to a shift of retail to The Moor, the rise of online shopping, months of scaffolding in 2019 - which made it a forbidding and gloomy tunnel - and a lack of maintenance.