Anders Hanson

This photo is of a group of buildings that every Sheffielder will know, but may not recognise from this viewpoint.

I happened to notice this collection of interesting chimneys, turrets and roofs on my way up Vicar Lane past the end of St. James’s Street. At the back is the top of Kemsley House (the distinctive building that houses Bradford & Bingley on High Street) and then in front is the top of the building on the corner of East Parade that houses a branch of Lloyds TSB, the offices of Natural England and a few other organisations.

I had to take this photo several times as I had to zoom in so far to get in all of the features that I wanted the camera shake was terrible. Fortunately I managed to get one good shot, but unfortunately this was the one photo that didn’t include the edge of Sheffield Cathedral that should be on the left of the photo.

I’ve always enjoyed taking photos, ever since I was a child. Recently I’ve got in to it even more and since I bought a new and decent camera at the end of last year I have taken more and more photos. I have started uploading the best to my Flickr site, but I thought from time to time I’d pick out some of my favourite ones here and say a bit more about them.

National Treasure

I took this photo today on Fargate, Sheffield’s main shopping street. He was one of a group of ‘Native Americans’ who have been busking there over the last few weekends. I’ve no idea where they come from or why they are there, but they always seem to get quite a crowd watching them. I like the way the film poster behind him, gives the impression that he is the national treasure. It was taken from some distance away and so he didn’t realise I’d taken it, but unfortunately I couldn’t get anymore of them playing as they stopped just after I had taken it.

I’ve always liked taking photos, ever since I was a small child and my parents gave me a camera. I was also slightly obsessive about taking photos of buildings and landscapes rather than people. That has pretty much stayed with me, although I do now take photos of my friends and family so I have a record of these things. In the last few years though I have started taking more and more photos, and since moving back to Sheffield a couple of years ago it has become an even bigger hobby. Taking photos though has become an obsession again though since moving to the city centre a few months ago.

The obsession with taking photos has probably come about through a mixture of having some good weather recently (makes a change), having more free time at the weekends, but most of all by realising how much of the city centre is changing. So it’s ended up becoming a bit of a mission to record more and more of the city centre before it changes for good. My big regret is that I don’t have a decent camera to do it with. Instead I am relying on my camera phone, until I can afford a decent camera.

I’ve uploaded many of these photos to my Flikr site, so some of these photos will be in the public domain when the redevelopment starts. The most significant ones for me are:

• Gillott’s Pearl Works on Eyre Lane. Although this building does not have much architectural merit, it is none the less an unusual aspect of the city’s industrial heritage. It is just down the road from where I now live, but the final Gillott to own the firm lived opposite me when I was growing up. I knew him less for his family business, and more for the time it would take for him to get his car back in to his drive after his once a week trip out in it to church on a Sunday.
• Park Hill flats. Love them or loath them, they are a dramatic piece of architecture and now look as though they will be here to stay. But instead of being the ’streets in the sky’ that transformed this part of the city from back to back slums to modern flats, they will instead become yuppy apartments.
• Grosvenor House Hotel. Not exactly a much loved building, but one of the main Sheffield hotels since it was built as part of the big rebuilding schemes after the Second World War and through the 60s and 70s. It will, along with most of the surrounding area, be demolished for the ‘New Retail Quarter’ over the next few years.
• Aizlewood’s Mill. A building that was saved from demolition some years ago, and is now the home to a host of small businesses and organisations.
• North Bank. One of the newest office blocks to be built in Sheffield, and in my view, one of the most impressive.
• Exchange Street. This area is already changing dramatically, and this once bustling road that was at the heart of the markets area will also be completely transformed over the next few years. I only hope they open up the castle ruins that lie underneath.

FLIKR: Anders Hanson Sheffield album

As today was a day off and with nothing planned, I did what all normal people do, and went off to Lincolnshire to look at an oil refinery.

I’ve always had a bit of a fascination with industrial architecture. The more obvious examples are some of the great mill buildings that you get across the north of England that these days seem to be used more for posh apartments than for making anything. But I also find some of the less attractive and still active industrial architecture fascinating.

I’ve posted before about how much I like the coast of Lincolnshire, and so with a whole day free I decided that it would be a good trip out. But for some unexplained reason I decided to drive around the Killingholme and Immingham area to look at some of the oil refineries and power stations that are there. I’ve uploaded one photo that I took, but I will upload the rest to Flikr when they’ve resolved the technical problems that they’ve got today. (12th Sept update - all photos now uploaded)

After driving around that area I decided to visit Cleethorpes as it is somewhere I haven’t been before and it gave me the opportunity to walk along the sea. It was low tide when I arrived and so I saw very little sea, but it is still quite dramatic to see the ships in the Humber Estuary from a distance and nice just to get a change of scenery and some sea air. Although I don’t really do the traditional British seaside holiday, there is something about seaside towns that I really like.

Anders Hanson on Flikr