Firth Park (ward)

[1] Firth Park is one of the four-and-a-half wards that make up the current Sheffield Hillsborough and Brightside Parliamentary constituency.

Located just 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from Meadowhall Shopping Centre and the M1 junction 34, and 3 miles (5 km) from the city centre, the area runs from Addison Road in the south of postal district S5 to the top of Bellhouse Road bordering Sheffield Lane Top and Shiregreen.

Firth Park includes the protected ancient woodland known as Hinde Common Wood, plus a substantial area of parkland along with mostly large Victorian style terraced houses which were built around 1910.

Well known landmarks include the clock tower community centre and old library on Firth Park Road, both listed buildings from the early 1900s.

The area benefits from being on a major cross city public transport route for the city of Sheffield and has a shopping centre with over 40 independent shops as well as High Street banks and building societies, national supermarket chains, well-known chemists and a variety of healthcare practitioners.

In January 2010, the Firth Park regeneration masterplan has been announced to include the utilisation of the natural water stream which runs through Hinde Common Wood.

On warm summer days, especially during the school annual holidays, it was a leisure point for many of North Sheffield’s teenage population.

Parson Cross (grid reference SK368913) is a Council housing estate situated 3.75 miles (6 km) north of Sheffield City Centre.

Most of the housing was built pre-war in 1938 (referred to as "Old Parson Cross" or simply "Sheffield 5") and post-war in 1947 (referred to as "New Parson Cross" or "The Colley Estate" ), although there was significant continuation during the war, using Italian PoWs who were billeted at Potter Hill Camp, High Green, and Lodge Moor Camp.

The Sheffield-West Riding demarcation line ran through the centre; consequently, there was a small but vociferous opposition from some members of the Wortley Rural District Council, who saw it as an inevitable “swallowing up” of their historical villages by an ever-expanding industrial city.

For Sheffield, however, it was essential that they find room for some 30,000 new homes as they continued production of a large proportion of the world's stainless steel.

The name originates from a large marker cross based at "The Grange" (now Wadsley Bridge WMC) which was visible from miles around, and signified the pathway to the Parsonage at Ecclesfield Church.

During the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, families were moved onto Parson Cross from industrialized areas of Sheffield such as Attercliffe and Heeley, where Victorian and Georgian cramped social housing units were being demolished, or turned from multi-occupancy to single-occupancy buildings.

The only significant waterway in Parson Cross is the "Tongue Gutter", a small brook which runs parallel with Deerlands Avenue for the entire width of the estate and which fed Ecclesfield Well from the 16th century onwards.

Welders, platers and grinders provided munitions of all shapes and sizes, and many female steelworkers, filled the gaps the men had left.

After the war, the wives of Parson Cross turned their hands to the bakeries (Fletchers and Sunblest) and confectionery (Bachelors and Bassetts).

Situated at the junction of Wordsworth Avenue and Southey Green Road, it opened in 1939 and closed as a cinema in 1966, although it continued as a bingo hall until 2001.

The final film was shown on Wednesday 9 November 1966 – Kim Novak & Richard Johnson in “The Amorous Adventures Of Moll Flanders”.

During the early years of the new millennium, the building was allowed to fall into ruin and became the victim of graffiti artists and arsonists alike.

As Sheila Parkin, she attended local secondary modern school “Yew Lane”, later renamed "Yewlands", where, at the age of fifteen, she was appointed as Head-Girl.

Entitled The View, it featured four fictional characters and was used as a catalyst for an invited audience of Parson Cross residents to comment on the plans and to talk about the issues raised.

[3] In 2010 a book about growing up in Parson Cross in the fifties, “Get Thi Neck Weshed” by Graham Shepherd, was published by ACMRetro, specialists in Sheffield’s post war social history.

Welcome to Parson Cross