Guided tours offered by happy residents of ‘streets in the sky’

NEW RESIDENTS of Sheffield’s revamped Park Hill flats are so impressed with their homes they are giving guided tours.

Anyone from architecture enthusiasts to those simply a little curious can now get a close look at what life is like in one of the 260 flats redeveloped by Urban Splash.

And although the days of milk carts driving along the ‘streets in the sky’ are long gone, a new community is emerging in the brutalist structure.

Heather Greaves, inset, 56, lives with her 14-year-old son in a two-bedroom flat. She says the retained streets – which have kept their original names – and the hallway entrances that see four flats open onto the same space mean residents regularly bump into each other.

“Having lived in three places I do think this has the most community,” she said. “We share lifts, we walk along the streets together.”

Social housing advocates often criticise the developer for creating homes that price low-income families out of the market – but Ms Greaves says that reputation is unfair.

“You read that it’s upmarket. OK, there are nice flats, but it’s not the Barbican,” she said.

“I just think some of the people that criticise it should come and look. We are not just posh people.”

The tours are the latest project from the Park Hill Residents’ Association, set up about 18 months ago. The group reports maintenance and upkeep issues and organises social events such as the book club. But there is also a wider ambition to promote the community.

A major aim is to create a community garden on an area of green space between the flats and the tram line.

Carl Goodman, 22, said: “The community garden is a big plot that we have been granted stewardship of by the council. It’s going to be fruit and veg, a sensory garden, somewhere to sit. Businesses can use it, too.

“Long-term it could be something like urban beekeeping.”