It’s said that great works of fiction always include within their own pages their own anti-book: the novel’s central thesis mirror-imaged and turned back on itself. The night to its day, the yin to its yang.
Exactly where I heard this great literary aphorism escapes me now, but one example is The Great Gatsby. While the book may be a take-down of the rich, it also understands the magnetic power of great wealth. Jay Gatsby’s opulent parties might be distasteful and yet we all secretly wish we’d been invited.
There’s some truth to that, at least in my case. However loudly I might claim I don’t hanker for the finer things in life, there’s a bit of me that quite likes them. I probably get this from my mother (sorry mum). The fact that I start thinking about such high minded literary analogies after visiting Nest — Park Hill flats’ new (super) high-end furniture store, which opened its doors for the first time on Monday — is no coincidence. Bear with me here, but I think this furniture store says a lot — like an anti-book — about the area and how it has drastically changed in a short space of time.
Nest looks a bit like my flat but is infinitely more impressive. Exposed concrete is everywhere and the double height ceilings make the space an awe-inspiring place to be. Up above us, a tangled mess of light fittings and air ducts give the room a stylish industrial feel. If only my flat was more like this, I think to myself.
The space is almost as impressive as the furniture. Almost. “Sit down in that one,” one of the shop assistants tells me. “It’s the comfiest chair I’ve ever sat in.” She’s not wrong. When I sit down on the Lamino easy chair with sheepskin upholstery it feels like I’ve died and gone to heaven. I look at its price and am swiftly brought back down to earth: £2,593.
The shop seems to have an endless array of beautiful furniture. There are gorgeous wishbone chairs crafted out of a smooth light-coloured wood and light-fittings made from Chinese paper umbrellas. One wall contains mannequin hands and quirky wooden painted dolls (£100 each).
“This is our iconic section,” the assistant tells me as I admire a set of chairs on a plinth. There’s a Knoll lounge chair worth £2,436, a Cherner armchair at £1,488 and most pricey of all: a House of Finn Juhl Pelican chair, which costs a cool £5,837. Amazingly, the Pelican chair is still not the priciest thing in there. That honour goes to a Vitra lounge chair and ottoman at £9,690. It’s easy to imagine Don Draper relaxing on it with a cigarette and an old-fashioned.
The shop Nest has taken is one of the ground floor units that were built during the building’s 2013 renovation. But the address listed in its tasteful brochures still refers to the notorious Sheffield pub that was there for decades before Urban Splash ever heard the name Park Hill: the Scottish Queen.
Whether it was ever really as bad as the rumours made out is debatable. It was said to be one of the roughest pubs in England but I’ve never seen any of the data on which this eye-opening claim is based. There were actually four pubs on the estate at one time. Along with the Scottish Queen there was the Earl George, the Link and the Parkway Tavern. An entertaining documentary featuring the Parkway Tavern is probably the best chance we have of understanding what the Scottish Queen was like. The TV programme The Toughest Pubs in Britain paints a picture of a typical estate boozer: perfectly fine most of the time but then every so often, not.
But the fact that the small pub crawl people used to be able to do round the complex is gone neatly illustrates how Park Hill has changed. And Nest’s arrival at the Scottish Queen could indicate that those changes are still taking place. A few years ago Urban Splash said they wanted to use Park Hill’s iconic status among designers as a way of turning the whole area into a new “mid-century modern quarter” for Sheffield.
Most current residents seem glad that the unit has been brought back into use. But there’s also something that sticks in the craw over furniture which costs thousands of pounds being sold in what is still one of the most deprived postcodes in the city. And that Park Hill’s current flashy, exclusive iteration has strayed too far from the idealistic vision of those who built it more than 60 years ago.
These complaints are nothing new, of course. When the last of the building’s previous residents were “decanted” out of the complex over a decade ago, the Guardian decried this so-called regeneration as “class cleansing”. In 2019, the author Lynsey Hanley wrote in the same paper that what Sheffield really needed wasn’t a new mid-century modern quarter, but rather new council housing.
As a Park Hill resident of some five years, those assessments feel slightly wide of the mark. While there are some people who fit the “well-heeled” description with which Hanley describes the building's new residents, there aren’t that many. But sometimes defending Park Hill against such charges can be tricky. Like when a high-end furniture shop where a single chair can set you back £9,000 opens in what was once one of the roughest pubs in England.
I’d written a piece about gentrification shortly after arriving at Park Hill in 2018. In that story I spoke to both current and former residents of the building about the tensions created in the area by Urban Splash’s multi-million pound regeneration project. I’ve always been interested in these flats as a byword for gentrification, and all the baggage that comes with it. Five years on, Nest’s arrival has inspired me to revisit the topic.
I make the short walk up to Park Library and Community Centre on Duke Street to meet fellow Park Hill resident Dave Watkins, 63, who volunteers there every week. It turns out he’s been in Nest already, and enjoyed it, even if he wasn't buying. “I couldn’t afford anything,” he laughs. “But the staff in there were very welcoming and not snooty at all.”
A retired bus driver, it’s difficult to know whether Dave counts as old or new Park Hill. But he does accept that the redevelopment has created tensions between the area’s original residents and the newcomers. Gone are the old pubs and shops and in have come things like Nest and South Street Kitchen, the building’s trendy vegetarian cafe. “Some of the old lot wouldn't go to the cafe because it costs more than £2 for a coffee,” he tells me. “So some people do probably feel a bit pushed out.”
But if the new shops bring new people and new money to the area then maybe it’s a price worth paying for the bigger prize of regenerating the building and the wider area, he adds. “As more businesses come, footfall on South Street will increase and make it a more desirable place to live,” he says. “I’m all for people visiting Park Hill, as long as they respect it.”
Dave has been on a learning curve too. Shortly after he first moved in, he attended a community meeting at which he used the phrase “the bad old days” to refer to the pre-Urban Splash Park Hill. “Everyone went silent and the meeting just stopped,” he tells me. “There is a common misconception that everything was terrible before we all moved in, but it just wasn’t the case.”
As well as a library, this grand 19th century building on Duke Street also houses a cafe, a training centre and The Pantry Project, a food union where people pay a flat rate of £4 per week to get a range of discounted household items. Just this week, it was revealed in The Star that the S2 Foodbank on the nearby Manor estate had expanded after demand tripled in the space of three months. The Pantry Project has recently experienced a similar rise in demand with 54 of their maximum 60 spaces currently filled.
Tracy Brown, 53, has worked at Park Library for almost 20 years, and lived at Park Hill when she was younger. She’s loud, both in her mannerisms and her dress sense. Wearing a bright yellow Ivy Park hoodie and dangly Africa-shaped earrings, she shouts out orders for cheesy chips and cups of tea from behind the counter.
I actually spoke to Tracy for my piece five years ago, although she doesn't remember. At the time she said that while she thought the renovation was generally positive, she was worried that it was too focused on the needs of wealthier outsiders rather than the area’s original people. What does she think of Nest, I ask. “It’s grotesque,” she says bluntly. “When people are struggling to pay their gas and electric bills, having a shop like that there is just gross.”
The sense of “us and them” isn't helping community relations in the area. Tracy says that too many of the new people aren’t “outward facing” enough. Other than Dave Watkins, not many play an active role in the wider community. It makes me worry that Park Hill is becoming, like Lynsey Hanley says, a “well-heeled” enclave surrounded by a larger group of poorer people with the two groups barely mixing with each other. “People feel like they can’t even walk through any more,” Tracy tells me. “Like they’ve been totally ostracised.”
It’s Wednesday afternoon so The Pantry Project is just about to open for the day. Dave and his colleague Jackie Bailey take me to a small room at the back of the building where rows upon rows of pasta, cereal, flour, jam and every kind of tinned food you can imagine are neatly arranged on the shelves.
After a steady stream of people start coming in with big bags or shopping carts I feel uncomfortable staying and begin to head out. Jackie tells me that even the modest £4 a week they charge can sometimes be too much for people, in which case they let them have a week or two for free. “You see it when they come through the door,” says Dave. “You can tell they have nothing.”
A couple of days after my visit to the showroom, I catch up with Nest managing director Toni Anne Dunleavy. She tells me they’re delighted to finally be part of the Park Hill community and share their “passion” for great design with the people of the building. They were initially attracted to the iconic building because of its design credentials, and want to play their part in making sure its still incomplete regeneration continues.
Who generally buys from Nest, I ask. Toni says they have a wide range of customers, ranging from retired or older clientele to people who are involved in the design industry in some way. They have a variety of price points, ranging from the expensive chairs that I saw to candles at a more manageable £40. The top-end furniture is often seen as an investment by people who value the sustainability of buying something once and never having to buy it again. “You'll never see our items in a skip,” she says.
How does she feel about criticisms that locating such a high-end furniture store in what is still a deprived community feels a bit, well, distasteful, especially when many of those who live in the surrounding area are struggling with the cost of living crisis? She takes my point but doesn’t agree. “Everyone has a choice where they go and where they buy,” she tells me. “We feel that we're bringing in another choice. A different choice maybe than what is the norm of the High Street to Sheffield.” The obvious counter-argument is that those choices aren’t open to everybody equally. They aren’t open to those who use The Pantry Project.
On my way back home I walk through Park Hill’s past and present. The crumbling concrete of the complex’s yet-to-be renovated sections stands out like a sore thumb next to the shiny new section where I live. Five years ago, I concluded that while tensions existed over the redevelopment of Park Hill, the regeneration was on balance a good thing. Well, I would say that, wouldn’t I?
This time I’m less sure. Since 2018, we’ve had the pandemic swiftly followed by the cost of living crisis, both of which have further exposed the deep fault lines running through our city. Urban Splash’s mantra in attracting investment like Nest was always that Park Hill needs to be made to work. But for who?
If you would like to donate to The Pantry Project, email Jackie Bailey at parkcommunityaction@gmail.com.
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