Sheffield Central Technical School

The buildings are robust ornate stone structures typical of the civic architecture of the time generally described as English Renaissance Revivalist in style.

The Firth College is specifically notable for its benefactor: Mark Firth - a successful local steel manufacturer and philanthropist, and for later becoming the University of Sheffield following its amalgamation with the Technical School and Medical School in Sheffield in 1897 and moving to a new larger site 8 years later.

The school was extended between 1894 and 1899 with a building on Bow Street (no longer a road) to form an infants school with a rooftop playground, and the Pupil Teacher Centre on Holly Street which was built in a Gothic Revival style of architecture by H W Lockwood.

As Urban populations migrated to the suburbs throughout the twentieth century the role of the Central School increasingly became unworkable, eventually leading to its closure in the 1930s.

(Some have noted, here, a similarity to the school song of Westminster College 'From the Cheviots down to Dover') In 1947, Herbert Willan Wadge, MBE (1956 Birthday Honours list) took up the appointment of headmaster of CTS following his move from headmaster of the Junior Technical School, Enfield (a department of Enfield Technical College).

Under him, CTS selected its (single-sex) pupils from across the city by means of an entrance examination at age 13 years.

Space at the school was at such a premium that tin-smithing and plumbing were taught in a building on Arundel Street adjacent to the rear of the Central Library (Sheffield) upstairs was a bakehouse where cooking & baking were taught but not to the Central Technical school students.

The original buildings in Leopold Street were occupied by the education offices of Sheffield City Council up until 2001 when it was redeveloped into apartments, a hotel, and bars/restaurants, by local architects Axis Architecture.