Update Summer 2024
In March we gave news of demolition work at the rear of the Old Coroner’s Court on Nursery Street. Sadly this did indicate the worst and in subsequent weeks the building was demolished, There was simply nothing left that we could do.
This was an important building for Sheffield and its loss was avoidable.
In 2019 HHB petitioned Sheffield Council to protect the building with an Article 4 direction and we were met with silence. The developer, Firestone Developments, had put forward a scheme that saved the front building, but the planning department declined this proposal because it involved a 12 storey tower, even though they had not long since given permission for another 12 storey tower a few yards down Nursery Street. Firestone then put forward another scheme which involved demolition, to be replaced by flats. Councillors rejected this scheme at committee, so the developer appealed to the government planning inspector to try and have the decision overruled (as is any developer’s right, free of charge, thanks government). The planning inspector did indeed overrule the decision and that basically exhausted the options we had left to try and protect the building..
Had the Coroner’s Court been in a conservation area, which was planned, then the building might have received sufficient protection. However the process of making Castlegate into a conservation area was sabotaged by Councillor Mazher Iqbal, senior cabinet member at the time, who summarily stopped the consultation on the conservation area that the planning department had begun. He went on record as stating his concerns that a Conservation Area might have been a ‘brake on development’…
Five years later Sheffield Council STILL has not recommenced the consultation, which is the first step in Castlegate area (replete with important heritage) gaining the protection it so obviously deserves.
Photos and video of the beginning of demolition by Sam Gregory from Now Then magazine.
