Trail:

Tour, Part 1

Click to enlarge
Sheffield, Flower Estate, Nos. 17-19 Primrose Avenue
Click to enlarge
Sheffield, Flower Estate, Nos. 161-3 Foxglove Road

The tour shows the houses built for the 1907 Exhibition. You can compare their present appearance with the drawings produced in the official Exhibition catalogue. You will see that the architects idealised their designs.

Local architects designed many of the cottages. They were criticised at the time for their undistinguished facades and unoriginal interior planning. In particular some cottages were designed with a separate parlourGlossary Term. This was thought unnecessary but tenants liked it. Others thought there were too many varieties of design, which looked untidy.

Click to enlarge
Sheffield, Flower Estate, Nos.73-75 Primrose Avenue
Click to enlarge
Sheffield, Flower Estate, 102-104 Primrose Avenue

The cottages had to be built for between £135 and £175. This meant that there could be little decoration. However, their low ceilings and small-paned windows gave the interiors a cottage-like atmosphere. This was quite different from the terraced houses built in the city.

We start in PRIMROSE AVENUE near the junction with Bellhouse Road. Nos. 102-104 are by F. W. Chapman. Then Nos. 78-84 (Myrtle Cottages) by H.L. Paterson. They have rounded parapets to the gables.

On the opposite side, Nos. 73-75 look like a detached house with one gableGlossary Term facing the road. They are by H. Stanley-Barrett & Driver of London, who were the architects of a pair of cottages in the 1905 Letchworth exhibition.

Nos. 69-71, a plain hipped-roof semi-detached by Henry Webster (who also designed Nos. 65-67), are also by Webster. Its double-gabled design was copied by the Corporation in the 1930s on the Parson Cross estate.

Glossary

Gable

Peaked external wall at the end of a double-pitch roof. Types include: Dutch gable, with curved sides crowned by a pediment (also called a Flemish gable); kneelered gable, with sides rising from projecting stones (kneelers); pedimental gable, with classical mouldings along the top; shaped gable, with curved sides; tumbled gable, with courses or brick or stonework laid at right-angles to the slope. Also (Scots) a whole end wall, of whatever shape.

Parlour

In an abbey or monastery, a room for talking to visitors in; in a medieval house, the semi-private living room below the solar or upper chamber.

Inside Explore Sheffield:

Have you seen: