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‘It always felt good here’: how Sheffield’s brutalist Park Hill estate survived the haters and their bulldozers
Branded a no-go area in the 80s, this immense complex was almost flattened like several of its neighbours. But an often painful redevelopment is giving it a new lease of life
‘I love Park Hill because you always know when you’re home,” says Joanne Marsden. “When I come back on the train, I look up and think: ‘Wow, I’m here. I’ve made it.’” She’s talking about the colossal housing estate that stands on the hillside above Sheffield like a great concrete castle, where she was born in 1965 in her nan’s back bedroom. Her grandparents were among the first residents to move into the bold vision of 1,000 council flats when it opened in 1961, her grandad taking a job in the boiler house that heated the homes. Marsden got her own flat a few doors down when she had her first child, then moved out in the 90s when the family grew. But, after some time in London, she moved back here in 2015, into one of the newly refurbished flats in the first phase of the estate’s redevelopment.
“They modernised it and put bling on it,” she says, “but I can’t say it feels any better than what it were. It always felt good living here.”
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