Why the Walkley area of Sheffield has had to change with the times

Today there’s less than half as many shops including just one butcher, one grocer, one greengrocer and a post office (all in one shop – we’ll come back to that), two independent bakers, one supermarket, one convenience store, one news agent, a TV and electrical shop, a florist, two gift shops, a couple of charity shops, two hairdressers and over a dozen cafes and takeaways – tellingly the only two sectors to have increased.

South Road in many ways still retains its 19th Century appearance - a gritstone Pennine village centred on a narrow main street. Although it grew rapidly from a hamlet in 1850 Walkley wasn’t well connected to Sheffield until the 1890s when the construction of the Crookes Valley Road viaduct opened a direct route for the electric trams. In the next twenty years every other terraced front room on Howard and South Roads turned into a small shop, sometimes selling a single product such as pikelets.

Most survived, often in the same family, until the 1970s. At that point the Corporation’s somewhat out of control slum clearance programme bulldozed most of Lower Walkley. It was stopped in its tracks at Walkley St around 1973 by a famous community campaign but though the area was rebuilt with decent low-rise social housing in the meantime many shoppers were lost.

There has always been stiff competition from nearby Hillsborough, Crookes and Broomhill, then came supermarkets and more recently internet shopping. Ironically one of the objectives of the scrapped plan for Walkley would have been a small bypass to take through traffic and buses off South Road possibly allowing some pedestrianisation and public space which most local centres lack.

One block of shops was demolished resulting in the dimunitive but dearly loved Walkley Green.

Recently the pandemic has also given a late boost to local shopping centres as people worked more from home and welcomed a chance for exercise and social contact, On Covid’s coat-tails comes a fresh initiative from the Council to halt the decline, and the Walkley Business Action Group has grabbed the offer. Chosen from over a hundred applications their plan has attracted £200,000 from the Economic Recovery Fund with similar grants for actions in Broomhill, Chapeltown, Totley and Firth Park.

Walkley is one of Sheffield’s most distinctive suburbs. Its steep terraced streets offer grand views over the post-industrial Don or the wooded Rivelin valleys. Its C19th history as ‘the working man’s garden suburb’ of small houses built on large allotment plots, interspersed by more standard terraces and newer infills gives it a unique quirky townscape. John Ruskin loved it and gave it an art collection, but didn’t move in.

It attracts a wide range of long-staying and talented people, resulting in an impressive array of local institutions, festivals and societies including the Community Library, the Fir St Institute (home of Cabaret Boom-boom), a flourishing local history group, an annual horticultural show and St Mary’s church and Community Centre. It is a much sought after place to live. Yet shops and pubs continue to turn back to residential.

Walkley shopping centre has actually been enjoying something of a low-key renaissance for several years, showcased by 2019’s year long Ruskin Festival. At the heart of the South Road revival have been Chris and Donna Beech. Between them since 2001 they have built Beeches of Walkley from a traditional butchers into an emporium of local food drink, crafts and even a post office. Along with Gerry’s Bakery, now doubled in size, the community run library and a slew of new start-ups the western end of South Road – the site of the original hamlet - is now the focus of a renaissance.

Between inventing ever more exotic sausages, Chris is now Walkley’s registered Post Master and he and Donna have been a moving force behind the proposals to strengthen and promote South Road and also Upperthorpe as twin local centres for community, shopping and leisure, linked by new public art and heritage trails.

To address the absence of public space there is a plan to create a ‘parklet’ of planters and benches in the layby outside Gerry’s and Plantology. Here, on the Green and around the corner on Fir Street will be staged this year’s hopefully best-ever Walkley Festival (they are just advertising for a Festival Co-ordinator) as well as other special markets and seasonal events as launched by Christmas carols on the Green. Banners, murals and flower boxes are on the way. The Library is working on a Walkley Directory of services and trades on line and in print and are looking for new volunteers.

So watch this space in 2022!

(Walkley Historians publications - available from Walkley Library, Beeches and https://walkleyhistory.wordpress.com)