Hyde Park was the site of the earliest large scale
slum clearance in Britain, the previous back-to-back housing having been known as "Little Chicago" in the 1930s, due to the violent crimes sometimes committed there. The area was partially razed before the
Second World War. The nearby
Park Hill housing estate was built between 1957 and 1961. Designed by Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith, under the auspices of J. L. Womersley, the deck access scheme, inspired by
Le Corbusier's
Unité d'Habitation and the Smithson's unbuilt schemes, most notably for
Golden Lane in
London, was viewed as revolutionary at the time. The plans for Hyde Park, then known as Part 2 of the Park Hill re-development scheme, were approved by the Housing Committee of
Sheffield City Council on 21 February 1958. At 18 storeys, the flats were to be the highest in the country outside London. The building work was undertaken by the Council’s Public Works Department. The first residents moved into Block D in October 1963 with the project being declared complete in June 1965, when the keys to the last flats were handed over to tenants. The finished scheme had 1,313 dwellings comprising 665 flats and 648 maisonettes, housing around 4,600 people. The opening ceremony was performed on 23 June 1966 by
Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, who gave a speech and unveiled a memorial plaque. Earlier in the day the Queen Mother had opened the
Arts Tower at the
University of Sheffield. Hyde Park consisted of four blocks A, B, C and D, with each block having a public house, these were namely, The Earl Francis, The Target, The Samuel Plimsoll and The Crow’s Nest, there were shops, clinic, tenants hall, youth club and a launderette. The Broomhall Flats and Kelvin Flats were demolished in the early nineties, replaced with the smaller Broomhall and Philadelphia housing estates with both private and rented houses. The Park Hill estate still survives as a grade II* listed building, and large scale renovation is under way. ==References==