Spaces of Cellular City: Sheffield station

May 09, 2024 · by Callum Deery (@CallumDeery2)##Cellular City##Design

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This is a series talking about the buildings and spaces which inspired Cellular City. Starting this week with the entrance to the city: the railway station.

Quiz question:

Sheffield has a history of inspiring games, which road out of the city inspired the name of a similarly twisty puzzle game?

(Answer next week!)

Ticket barriers and rights of way

The first thing you'll notice, or rather notice the lack of, when arriving at Sheffield station is ticket barriers. This attempt at removing conductors' jobs disguised as stopping fare dodging have been popping up across UK stations, despite many problems with queues, reliability, and accessibility. So why not Sheffield?

Well when I planned this article I thought it was because Sheffield station bridge was a public right of way and therefore the ticket barriers couldn't block that way but it turns out it isn't. The situation is way more complicated, and gets to the heart of webs of usage, priorities, and ownership which criss-cross UK cities.

(Note for non-UK readers: Public rights of way are paths in the UK which guarantee routes for members of the public and cannot be blocked. They often end up going through places landowners would rather they didn’t, such as the one in York which cuts through a military base. Once created they’re basically impossible to remove under UK law. Landowners often end up doing silly things, like shutting a gate once a year on Christmas day, to make sure paths don’t meet the requirements for becoming a right of way)

Sheffield station provides a route connecting the city centre to the east of the city (as well as the tram stop above the station), which would otherwise be blocked by the train tracks. This has been a potential problem since 1870 when the station was built, with the Sheffield City Council’s predecessor (Sheffield Corporation) expressing concerns even then. There are two other nearby possible pedestrian routes across the tracks: a small, rusty footbridge to the south of the station (which is actually a public right of way), or a diversion north via park square trambridge. Neither of these routes are ideal, as the footbridge isn’t wheelchair accessible nor particularly well maintained and park square adds 20 minutes to your journey.

Noting this problem Sheffield council, alongside local campaigners, resisted East Midlands Railway’s (EMR) attempts to put in ticket barriers, with the £15 million of public investment in the bridge being pointed to as a source of leverage. This gets us further into the web of ownership and usage around the city. Broadly there are 2 major public groups of users: Train/tram commuters, Pedestrians journeying to and from the city centre, whose needs for the space align with some but not all of the goals for the stations owners. The owners being a mess of Network rail (a government corporation which owns the station) and EMR (a private company which operates it), and a number of businesses both small and large who have premises within the station (From locals like Forge bakehouse to Megacorps like Starbucks). Sheffield Council, who have leverage through their control of planning permission and investment.

There's also the marginalised group of homeless people who could use the station for shelter and safety, however through a recent public spaces protection order the council has aligned itself against this group of Sheffield citizens and with the corporations (who have long been building hostile architecture in the station). Negotiations over usage and benefit are core to the modern city, and the station shows how our systems of governance only allow certain groups to have their needs expressed and heard.

(On a final note there might be a case that the route through the station itself could meet the requirements for being declared a right of way, and this was used as a threat by the council in 2010 when EMR attempted to add ticket barriers. Right of way law is complicated and often results in long legal battles.)

The large steel fountain

Exiting the station you cannot possibly miss the large steel fountain which sweeps across the plaza. Named “The Cutting Edge” the fountain is supposed to combine “Steel, the city's famous resource with Water and Light” (Quote Sheffield City council).

There is some irony to this framing, as it's actually the water that was the City’s resource. Sheffield’s 7-ish rivers, most prominently the Rivelin and Sheaf, powered the 17th century cutlery industry which formed the core of Sheffield's steel making.

The fountain's name is at least well chosen, representing it's builders plans for Sheffield: to centre the city in advanced manufacturing through private investment and the city's two Universities, and perhaps as a homage to the water jet cutters which are extensively used in the production of modern steel components. If these plans will come to fruition remains to be seen, we are after all a financial crash, 15 years of austerity, and a pandemic divorced from the fountains building in 2006.

The voices of the city:

The square just outside the station is a perfect place to make voices heard. From the famous Nuclear freezone (although we'll get back to that when we talk about the Foundry of Forge masters), to the “People's republic of South Yorkshire'' which resisted Thatcher, Sheffield has long been a centre of UK leftwing movements.

This continues to this day where the people of Sheffield make clear their opinion on current political matters:

Free Palestine

Support striking workers

Fuck the Tories