Sheffield's Park Hill: Estate expectations - Architecture, Arts & Entertainment - The Independent

Sheffield's Park Hill: Estate expectations - Architecture, Arts & Entertainment - The Independent

No visitor to Sheffield can have failed to notice them. Perched high on the rise overlooking Sheffield station, Park Hill flats have been variously described as a fortress, a prison block and by almost everyone as a blot on the landscape. And yet, 50 years ago tomorrow on 16 June 1961, it all seemed so different as Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the Opposition, arrived in Sheffield to open the newly built Park Hill council estate. The first residents had already moved in but a new batch was about to arrive as Gaitskell unveiled a plaque to commemorate the occasion. Alongside him, Roy Hattersley, chairman of the Public Works Committee beamed. It was Hattersley's public works department that had won the contract to build the flats with the lowest offer and had successfully completed the task at £100,000 below their bidding price.