...derp alert.
I've had my eye on this one for years and had seen the occasional report crop up on it, but it was always sealed tight whenever I looked myself. To be fair, it's absolutely wrecked inside, but it does still have some nice features and I enjoyed rooting through all the old paper work and personal photos. Actually, currently trying to track down the relatives of a couple who's wedding album I found rotting away.
Anyhoo. Picz.
Thanks for looking. [/derp]
St Vincent’s Church is a disused (since 1998) Roman Catholic church situated on Solly Street at its junction with Hollis Croft in the centre of the City of Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
As a result of the Irish Potato Famine between the years of 1845 and 1849 many emigrants left Ireland to try to find a better life in England. The developing cutlery and tool industries of Sheffield attracted many of these Irish emigrants and they settled in "The Crofts" area of the town. The Crofts was centred on Solly Street (then called Pea Croft) and at that time was the centre of the Sheffield steel, cutlery and filemaking industries. It was an area of working class tenements and back to back housing interspersed with iron and steel works and small workshops making cutlery and hand tools.
The majority of the Irish emigrants in The Crofts were Roman Catholics and worshipped at the newly opened St Marie’s church in Norfolk Row, the only Catholic church in Sheffield in the early 1850s. Father Edmund Scully of St Marie’s pledged to build a school-chapel for The Crofts area and on Good Friday 1851 a plot of ground was purchased in the area for £700. Matthew Ellison Hadfield designed the chapel-school which was completed in July 1853 at a cost of £1,850.
The first Sheffield Blitz raid by German bombers on the night of 12/13 December 1940 resulted in the destruction of the original 1853 chapel when a parachute mine landed on the roof. The original girls school was also destroyed and every window in the church was blown out destroying some valuable stained glass windows. The newer part of the church from 1911 escaped serious damage.
Vigorous fund raising enabled much re-building to be done on the damaged church in the 1950s, this included a new chapel, replacement roofs and a new entrance porch, organ loft and choir gallery.
Due to the war damage and continuing slum clearances in the post war St Vincent’s area, the church lost much of its congregation as the district was rebuilt as a business area. In 1998 it closed as a place of worship and is in need of some renovation with much of the land round the church used for car parking.
I've had my eye on this one for years and had seen the occasional report crop up on it, but it was always sealed tight whenever I looked myself. To be fair, it's absolutely wrecked inside, but it does still have some nice features and I enjoyed rooting through all the old paper work and personal photos. Actually, currently trying to track down the relatives of a couple who's wedding album I found rotting away.
Anyhoo. Picz.
Thanks for looking. [/derp]