Sheffield

Heeley City Farm is a city farm in the district of Heeley, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. It is a community-based and led training, employment... and youth enterprise. Heeley City Farm was founded in 1981 on land where the Sheffield South Relief road —commonly called the Heeley bypass, a scheme which blighted the lives of hundreds of local residents for 30 years— was to be built. Construction never started and the land was put to new use. Heeley City Farm is based around a wind and sun powered mini farm and a number of environmental social enterprises and attractions. The focus of its work is in Heeley but increasingly it operates throughout Sheffield and into the South Yorkshire region, including work at Wortley walled garden, Dore and Meersbrook. Now over 25 years old and winner of several national and international awards, Heeley City Farm provides environmental, health, food and farming education to around 5,000 school children and several thousands adult visitors each year.
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The Wheel of Sheffield was a 60 metres tall transportable Ferris wheel installation on Fargate, by the Town Hall, in Sheffield, England. It was... opened on 20 July 2009, and was intended to remain until January 2010. However, planning permission was sought for a further year of operation, and permission was granted for it to remain until January 2011. This date has however been brought forward to October 2010, when WTA planned to dismantle the wheel and relocate it to Hyde Park, London. The Wheel of Sheffield closed for good on 31 October 2010, and it had been completely dismantled by 20 November 2010. It had 42 passenger cars, each with an 8 person capacity, and was operated by World Tourist Attractions. One revolution on the wheel took around 13 minutes. It also featured a commentary pointing out local landmarks and places of interest.
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The National Centre for Popular Music was a museum in Sheffield, England for contemporary music and culture, a £15 million project largely... funded with contributions from the National Lottery, which opened on 1 March 1999, and closed in June 2000. The building, designed by Branson Coates Architects following an architectural design competition managed by RIBA Competitions, consists of four giant stainless steel drums, surrounding an atrium area, the upper floor of which has a glazed roof. The drums, whose tops were built to rotate in to the wind, no longer rotate and have been left pointing in various directions. The unusual building has acquired a number of local nicknames including the curling stones, drums and kettles. The Museum featured a 3D surround sound auditorium in one of the drums created by Sheffield-based musician and producer Martyn Ware, who later used the same technology as the basis for his touring project "The Future of Sound". Two other drums were called Perspectives and Making Music .
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The Kelham Island Museum is an industrial museum on Alma Street, alongside the River Don, in the centre of Sheffield, England. It was opened in 1982.... The island on which it is located is man-made, resulting from the construction of a mill race, in the 12th century, which diverted water from the River Don to power a corn mill belonging to the Lord of the Manor. It is reported that the island was subsequently named after the Town Armourer, Kellam Homer, who owned a grinding workshop on the neighbouring goit in 1637. Having remained meadowland for much of its existence, John Crowley's Iron Foundry was built on the site in 1829 and continued in operation until the 1890s. This building was replaced by a power station, in 1899, to provide electricity for the new fleet of trams in the city. These are the premises now occupied by the museum. The museum houses exhibitions on science and Sheffield industry, including examples of reconstructed little mesters' workshops and England's largest surviving Bessemer converter. This object received an Engineering Heritage Award in 2004 from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
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Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet is an industrial museum in the south of the City of Sheffield, England. The museum forms part of a former steel-working... site on the River Sheaf, with a history going back to at least the 13th century. It consists of a number of dwellings and workshops that were formerly the Abbeydale Works—a scythe-making plant that was in operation until the 1930s—and is a remarkably complete example of a 19th century works. The works are atypical in that much of the production process was completed on the same site . A more typical example of water powered works in the area can be found at Shepherd Wheel. The site is a scheduled ancient monument, the works are Grade I listed and the workers' cottages, counting house, and manager's house are Grade II* listed. The site was used for iron forging for 500 years, although there is evidence of other metal working prior to 1200 AD. Its early history is intimately tied with the nearby Beauchief Abbey, which operated a smithy in the vicinity as well as number of mills along the River Sheaf.
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Shepherd Wheel is a working museum in a former water-powered grinding workshop situated on the Porter Brook in the south-west of the City of... Sheffield, England. One of the earliest wheels on the River Porter, it is one of the few remaining—and effectively complete—examples of this kind of enterprise, one that used to be commonplace in the Sheffield area. Its 5.5 m diameter overshot water wheel is powered from a large dam stocked with water diverted from the Porter Brook. The workshops, dam, goit and weir are Grade II listed, and the site is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. Works on the site of Shepherd Wheel date back at least as far as 1584 when the wheel was passed to the sons of William Beighton in his will. The present buildings date from c1780, during the time that Edward Shepherd—after whom the site is now named—was the tenant of the wheel . Throughout the 19th century the wheel was held by the Hinde family, who operated it until its closure in 1930. In 1900, Sheffield City Council bought the land surrounding the wheel from the Duke of Norfolk to make a public park.
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Derek Bailey was an English avant-garde guitarist and leading figure in the free improvisation movement. Bailey was born in Sheffield, England. A... third generation musician, he began playing the guitar at the age of ten, going on to study music with Sheffield City organist C.H.C. Biltcliffe and guitar with George Wing and John Duarte. As an adult he found work as a guitarist and session musician in clubs, radio, dance hall bands, and so on, playing with many performers including Gracie Fields, Bob Monkhouse and Kathy Kirby, and on television programs such as Opportunity Knocks. Bailey was also part of a Sheffield based trio founded in 1963 with Tony Oxley and Gavin Bryars called 'Joseph Holbrooke' . Although originally performing relatively 'conventional' jazz this group became increasingly free in direction. Bailey moved to London in 1966, frequenting the Little Theatre Club run by drummer John Stevens. Here he met many other like-minded musicians, such as saxophonist Evan Parker, trumpet player Kenny Wheeler and double bass player Dave Holland.
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Richard Hawley is a guitarist, singer-songwriter and producer. After his first band Treebound Story broke up, Hawley found success as a member of... Britpop band Longpigs in the 1990s. He later joined the band Pulp, led by his friend Jarvis Cocker. As a solo musician, Hawley has released six studio albums. Impressed by a home demo of his songs, both Pulp's Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey urged Hawley to record his first eponymous mini-album, released in 2000. In 2001, Late Night Final, named after the cry of vendors selling the Sheffield Star evening newspaper on the streets of the city, was released to positive reviews from the press, if unspectacular sales. Two years later Hawley released Lowedges, named after a suburb of the city that the young Hawley had seen on the destination board of a bus. The NME called Lowedges the "first great album of 2003" and it topped an end-of-the-year poll held by Virgin Radio. Critical praise was widespread, leading many big names such as Coldplay, Radiohead and R.E.M.
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David Blunkett is a British Labour Party politician and the Member of Parliament for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, having represented... Sheffield Brightside from 1987 to 2010. Blind since birth, and coming from a poor family in one of Sheffield's most deprived districts, he rose to become Education and Employment Secretary, Home Secretary and Work and Pensions Secretary in Tony Blair's Cabinet following Labour's victory in the 1997 general election. He departed from government in 2004 after unfounded accusations were made against him as a result of personal issues that were being fought out in the High Court Family Division, and left government again in 2005 following sustained pressure on and surveillance of his private life and accusations relating to non-compliance with the Advisory Committee on Ministerial Appointments outside governments, later dealt with in Blunkett’s favour by the Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet and Head of the Civil Service. Blunkett was born on 6 June 1947 at Jessop Hospital, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, with improperly developed optic nerves due to a rare genetic disorder.
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Mark White is an English musician, best known for being part of the pop band ABC, from 1980 to 1992. His last contribution to the band was their... 1991 album, Abracadabara. In the late 1970s, White was a member of ABC's predecessor band, the three-piece electronic group, Vice Versa. Other members of the trio were David Sydenham and future ABC saxophonist Stephen Singleton. After being interviewed by future ABC frontman Martin Fry for his fanzine, Modern Drugs, the bandmembers invited Fry to join the group, and Vice Versa evolved into ABC. With ABC, White served as the band's guitarist, synthesizer player, co-songwriter and backing vocalist. On How to Be aMillionaire! he played the Emulator II, Fairlight CMI and the synthesizers. White released solo albums, Life and Tunch . He declined to participate in VH1's Bands Reunited in 2004, when attempts were made to reform ABC for a one-off performance.
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Eddie Laughton was a British-born American film actor. Born in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, Laughton appeared in over 200 films... between 1935 and 1952. Laughton left his native England to pursue a Hollywood film career. He started in vaudeville, and, according to a biography of Larry Fine of the Three Stooges, managed a vaudeville theatre where Fine once played. The pencil-mustached Laughton was placed under contract by Columbia Pictures in 1935. He appeared in many Columbia features, short subjects, and serials throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Modern viewers will remember Laughton for his role as "Percy Pomeroy, convict 41144" in the Stooge comedies So Long Mr. Chumps and Beer Barrel Polecats, or as the happy drunk in Loco Boy Makes Good. Laughton was an excellent utility player, useful in good-guy and bad-guy roles alike. Laughton was also a convincing dialect comedian, playing a French nobleman in Buster Keaton's She's Oil Mine, and an English big-game hunter plastered with pies in the Stooges' In the Sweet Pie and Pie.
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Stoney is a British musician, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Stoney first appeared on the UK music scene following the release of his debut... inventive and homegrown-style album Amber in 2001. A quirky collection of songs written in his teens, and recorded in his Sheffield basement following his escape from his hometown of Croydon, it was independently distributed initially through a few local record shops on his own Holy Moly label. Stoney played all the instruments on the record. In response to the positive public reaction, a full band was formed to take the songs to the stage, and a three track EP of songs from the album, enitled Amber EP, was released nationally the next year gaining Stoney his first national radio airplay. Stoney signed to Island Records in 2003, teaming up with producers Kevin Bacon and Jon Quarmby to record an album. During this time, Stoney and his band performed under the name of Stoneylacuna, to reflect the change from the singer-songwriter feel of Amber to the bigger, full band sound of the new recordings.
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David Blunkett is a British Labour Party politician and the Member of Parliament for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, having represented... Sheffield Brightside from 1987 to 2010. Blind since birth, and coming from a poor family in one of Sheffield's most deprived districts, he rose to become Education and Employment Secretary, Home Secretary and Work and Pensions Secretary in Tony Blair's Cabinet following Labour's victory in the 1997 general election. He departed from government in 2004 after unfounded accusations were made against him as a result of personal issues that were being fought out in the High Court Family Division, and left government again in 2005 following sustained pressure on and surveillance of his private life and accusations relating to non-compliance with the Advisory Committee on Ministerial Appointments outside governments, later dealt with in Blunkett’s favour by the Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet and Head of the Civil Service. Blunkett was born on 6 June 1947 at Jessop Hospital, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, with improperly developed optic nerves due to a rare genetic disorder.
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Peter James Stringfellow is an English nightclub owner. Stringfellow was born on 17 October 1940 in Sheffield to Elsie and James William... Stringfellow , a steelworker. The eldest of four sons, the family briefly lived in London during the 1950s where he attended Finchley Catholic Grammar School. After leaving school, he became a cinema projectionist. Then after six weeks at his father's steel works, he joined the British Merchant Navy aged 17. On a trip to New York he visited the many night clubs, and on return left the Merchant Navy and became a salesman during the day , to enable him to run dance nights at a local church hall, and then open his own club in Sheffield, the Black Cat Club. In 1963 he opened the King Mojo Club, which in its three years of operation played host to Jimi Hendrix, Wilson Pickett, Ike and Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder and The Small Faces. Lived in Steeton, near Keighley.
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James Stuart Blackton , usually known as J. Stuart Blackton, was an Anglo-American film producer of the Silent Era, the founder of Vitagraph Studios... and among the first filmmakers to use the techniques of stop-motion and drawn animation. He is considered the father of American animation. Blackton was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, in 1875. At the age of ten, he and his family immigrated to New York City. In 1894, Blackton and two fellow English émigrés, Albert E. Smith and Ronald A. Reader, formed a partnership to break into vaudeville. Smith called himself the "Komikal Konjurer", Blackton was the "Komikal Kartoonist", and Reader operated an early version of the slide projector called a "magic lantern". Blackton's act consisted of "lightning sketches", where Blackton drew and rapidly modified drawings on an easel pad before the audience's eyes, accompanying this with a stream of talk nearly as rapid. The act failed to make enough money and the trio broke up to get regular jobs. Blackton ended up as a reporter/artist for the New York Evening World newspaper.
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Oona Tamsyn King, Baroness King of Bow is a Labour politician and former Chief Diversity Officer of Channel 4. She previously had served as a Labour... Party Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow from 1997 until 2005, when she was defeated by Respect candidate George Galloway. She was the second black female MP elected to the House of Commons, after Diane Abbott. King, who is mixed race, was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire to a white Jewish mother, social justice activist Murreil Hazel Sterns, and an African-American father, political theorist Preston King. She is the niece of the medical doctor Miriam Stoppard and her playwright husband Tom Stoppard. Her cousin is the actor Ed Stoppard. On her father's side, she comes from a line of civil rights activists and successful entrepreneurs. Her paternal grandfather, the civil rights activist, Clennon Washington King, Sr. fathered seven sons. King was educated at Haverstock Comprehensive Secondary School on Crogsland Road in Chalk Farm , London, and was contemporary with David Miliband and his brother, Ed Miliband.
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Shaun Mark "Sean" Bean is an English film and stage actor. Bean is known for playing Boromir in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and, previously,... British Colonel Richard Sharpe in the ITV television series Sharpe. He is also known for his film work playing such roles as Alec Trevelyan in GoldenEye, Jason Locke in Essex Boys, Odysseus in Troy, Ian Howe in National Treasure and Andy McNab in Bravo Two Zero. Bean has also acted in a number of television productions and character roles such as playing Robert Aske in Henry VIII and Eddard Stark in HBO's Game of Thrones. He has also performed voice work for computer games, including Martin Septim in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and in television advertisements—most recently for the O2 mobile network and the Why Pink Floyd? campaign. Bean was born Shaun Mark Bean in the Handsworth district of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, the son of Rita and Brian Bean. Bean's father owned a fabrication shop, which he had set up with a colleague. The business employed 50 people, including Bean's mother, who worked as a secretary. He has a younger sister named Lorraine.
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Brian Glover was an English character actor, writer and wrestler. Glover was a professional wrestler, teacher, and finally a film, television and... stage actor. He once said, "You play to your strengths in this game. My strength is as a bald-headed, rough-looking Yorkshireman". Glover was born in Sheffield, but grew up in Barnsley. His father was a wrestler, performing as the "Red Devil". He attended Barnsley Grammar School and the University of Sheffield, where he supplemented his student grant with appearances as a professional wrestler, going under the ring name "Leon Aris the Man From Paris". In 1954 he married and became a teacher at the same Barnsley school where he had been a pupil. Glover worked as a school teacher from 1954 until 1970, managing to combine this with regular performances as "Leon Aris", whose appearances included bouts in Paris, Milan, Zurich, and Barcelona.
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