.	Home
.	Urban Design
.	Contents
.	Foreword
.	City Vision
.	Introduction
.	The City Centre
.	Inherited City
.	Historic Events
.	The Urban Pattern
.	Topography
.	Green City
.	Geographical Location
.	Rivers & the City
.	Industrial Heritage
.	Conclusions
.	Part 2.1 (PDF file size 1.65MB)
.	Part 2.1 (Word file size 55k)
.	Sheffield Today
.	Use & Perception
.	Key Findings
.	Strategic Guidance
.	The Quarters
.	Public Realm Design Guidelines
.	Tools & Applications
.	Consultation Process & Acknowledgements
.	Bibliography
.	Links

Town Hall, Sheffield, S1 2HH telephone: (0114) 272 6444

2.1 Inherited City

The Urban Pattern

1905 OS Plan of Sheffield City Centre The different street patterns and massing of its urban blocks are a result of the city centre’s development and evolution since its medieval beginnings. Different periods of development can be identified, as follows:

Remnants of the medieval heart of Sheffield are still apparent in the street patterns around Fargate, High Street and Waingate areas. Although many of these areas were redeveloped in the Victorian era, there is evidence of the original land ownerships in the form of burgage plots running back to narrow lanes and back streets.
The urban form in the Cathedral Quarter is dense, and fine grain due to its original residential use. Built speculatively for merchant housing in the mid 18th century, the area was laid out on a grid with streets running north down the slope toward the Don Valley. Building footprints align consistently along the streets, providing a distinct street pattern.
The grid pattern of streets evidenced in the CIQ is the result of the planned development of the Duke of Norfolk’s land. The dense built form is a characteristic of the industrial and residential land uses which dominated the area. Much of this character has disappeared replaced by modern development. The street pattern, however, has remained fairly intact despite some late 20th century development cutting across the grid.
The legible urban pattern of the gridded street layout continues in the Devonshire Quarter, developed in the early nineteenth century following the building of the new Glossop Turnpike Road (now West Street). The area was developed for terraced housing, workshops and factories and had a dense urban form with consistent block sizes and street enclosure. Today, the urban blocks are less dense and cohesive as a result of war damage, slum clearance, factory closures and piecemeal development.

Despite this, the strong alignment of the streets remains particularly evident at West Street, Division Street and Rockingham Street. This provides a clear structure and definition to the area. The erratic urban pattern of the residential area around Gell Street is incongruous with the rest of the Devonshire Quarter and has more in common in terms of built form, use and character with the areas to the west of the Ring Road.
The strong grid of the Moor aligns with the streets in the CIQ, and the Moor (formerly South Street), provides a strong axis toward the Heart of the City. Redeveloped after its total destruction during the war, large footprints were created to define the blocks.
The different alignments of the street grids of the Devonshire Quarter and the CIQ/Moor meet along Charter Row, which by its width and design severs connections between these two areas.
The Scotland Street area is typified by smaller building footprints reflecting the industrial workshops in this area. Riverside, particularly around Kelham Island, is characterised by the larger footprints of factories aligned along the River Don.
Both the Townhead Street and Edward Street flats have distinctive footprints, with the buildings wrapping around a central private space and aligning with the streets. The Parkhill flats to the east of the centre are also very distinctive - in their plan set in open green space, as well as their built form on elevated ground.
The Ring Road provides an obvious delineation between the west and south of the city centre with the railway lines and the Parkhill flats defining the eastern edge. The River currently forms the centre’s northern. However this area will be reconfigured with the completion of the Inner Relief Road.
While the River Don and the Sheffield to Tinsley Canal are intact and important components of the city’s urban form, the River Sheaf and sections of the Porter Brook are culverted resulting in the loss important characteristics of the town.
The 1994 City Centre Strategy identified two main axes which have emerged in the city centre: the retail spine stretching from Victoria Quays to the Moor, and the east-west axis between the universities. These intersect in the core area of the city, around the Town Hall. To an extent the activities at the end of these axes - the markets and Victoria Quays - have been isolated from the city centre.

The piecemeal development of Sheffield and intervention in the post-war period have created very distinct character areas within the city. This is generally a positive feature but there is currently no relationship or coherence between these character areas which has a negative impact on the overall legibility and permeability of the city centre.

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