Planters, pomeranians and police reports: A gated community in Hillsborough is at war

Good afternoon, readers — and welcome to this, slightly delayed, edition of The Tribune.

There’s a rumour that Middlewood Lodge — once the administrative building of a Victorian mental asylum in Hillsborough, now 38 upmarket flats — is haunted. Having spent two long days there, I could readily believe it. Something is haunting this beautiful gated community in the middle of Wadsley Park, and it’s pushing some of its inhabitants to the brink. One leaseholder refused to answer when I asked how she was finding living there; she was worried she might cry. “I’m shaking now even talking about it,” she said.

For the last five years, a bitter civil war has been brewing in the building, one that may finally come to a head at an “extraordinary general meeting” in two weeks. In the past, vicious rows have broken out over — among many other things too numerous to fully detail — decorative planters, parking and alleged pomeranian-based intimidation. South Yorkshire Police have reportedly been contacted four different times, by four different residents. I simply had to find out what was going on.

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Your Tribune briefing

🏅 The event took place 33 years ago, but Sheffield Council will finally pay off the debt they incurred from the World Student Games next month, the BBC report. Some say the games transformed the city, helping build sports venues including Ponds Forge, Sheffield Arena and the Don Valley Bowl. But with interest and four rounds of refinancing, costs soared to £658 million, leading others to brand them a financial disaster. Our piece about the games is here.

🌊 Sheffield Council has agreed to fund work to repair two historic dams in the Sheaf and Porter valleys. The authority will spend almost £670,000 to fix leaks at Abbeydale Dam at Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, and another £46,000 on works to fix a sluice gate which was damaged during previous work at Forge Dam. In the late 18th century there were 20 dams and millponds in the Porter Valley alone which harnessed the power of water to drive the early industrial revolution.

🛣️ Three Sheffield roads are finally to be resurfaced, eight years after a previous attempt sparked outrage and protest over the safety of their street trees. The council has launched a public consultation on resurfacing plans for Dunkeld, Silver Hill and Banner Cross roads in Ecclesall, with plans to retain street trees by using engineering solutions such as “build outs” to allow trees to grow. Some residents have previously claimed that the council was punishing them for taking part in the protests. Our piece on the dispute is here.

Things to do

🎤 On Friday, legendary comedy club Jongleurs host their very first night in Sheffield at Network on Matilda Street. The brand — which was once the biggest chain of comedy clubs in the UK — has been running in various guises since they opened their first venue in Battersea in London in 1983. Compered by Mark Olver, the evening will also feature top Cornish comedian Matt Price and British-Armenian comedy musician Kev Orkian. Tickets are £15 and doors open at 6pm.

🖼️ On Saturday, join Andrew Jackson (Trustee, Sheffield Design Awards & Civic Voice) for an afternoon tour around the public artworks of Sheffield city centre. The walk will take in over 40 pieces, many of which have been shortlisted for the annual Keith Hayman Award for Public Art — an award jointly presented by Sheffield Civic Trust and Sheffield Design Awards since 2014. The four hour tour begins at 1pm and costs £6. Meet at Salt on Green Lane in Kelham Island.

🎷 On Sunday, Sheffield Jazz and Crookes Social Club welcome back Doncaster Jazz Alumni, a big band of musicians with links to the Doncaster Youth Jazz Association. The association is well known in the jazz music world and has produced many musicians who are contributors or key members of leading bands. Expect another stylistically diverse programme with proceeds going to the Doncaster Youth Jazz Association. Tickets are £5-£12 and doors open at 2.30pm.

Planters, pomeranians and police reports: A gated community in Hillsborough is at war

It seems Mark Pawson, a 59-year-old driving instructor and a director of Middlewood Lodge Management Company, is starting to regret speaking to me. He hopes I’m impartial, he tells me, but he’s also heard from one of his fellow directors that I might be “working for them”. He knows I returned to the building the day after our hours-long chat about the alleged campaign to oust him as director and he knows who I have been talking to. “I have got people in here who tell me things. I have got spies in their camp who might not be what they seem,” he says. “What they don’t realise is I have got a lot of allies in here.”

When he talks about “them,” I can only assume he is referring to a group of four other leaseholders in the building who, earlier this month, called an Extraordinary General Meeting of the management company. On 8th March, the owners of all 38 flats in Middlewood Lodge, a converted Victorian hospital building in Wadsley Park, will be invited to vote on which leaseholders should sit on the board of directors and thus steer how the building’s property management agent, Omnia, spends everyone’s annual service charge. It’s an unpaid volunteer position, and seemingly a tiring and thankless job, but a number of residents are keen to secure a seat at the table.

These insurgents are, according to Mark, desperate to get rid of him, despite everything he has done for Middlewood Lodge over the years. “I don’t get anything out of it, other than I live here and want to make the place better,” he says, mournfully. He puts me in touch with a leaseholder who doesn’t live in the building, 61-year-old Gurinder Singh, but is effusively complimentary about Pawson’s influence on it. “Four years ago the building really was in a terrible state,” Singh tells me. “Since then, there’s been this remarkable uplift, which obviously, at the same time, has enhanced the value of the property.”

Nobody I speak to seems to deny that Middlewood Lodge is broadly well-maintained, even if they disagree with some of the current board’s choices. Rather, the general thrust of the complaints from those unhappy with Pawson is that he — the only board member who lives in the building, and the one everyone agrees is running the show — is making it impossible to enjoy their beautiful home, because he insists on ruling it with an iron fist. Andrea Cooper, a 55-year-old leaseholder and one of the four that called for the EGM, says she worries how he’ll react if they successfully vote him off the board. But, at the same time: “He has to be called out, we can’t live like this.”

Another leaseholder, who asked to remain anonymous, says they were baffled to discover there had been all this resentment festering in the building. A flurry of “vague allegations and passive-aggressive social media posts” has only made them more confused. They’ve never had any personal problems with Pawson, but the fact that a number of other people seem to is making them worried they’ve missed something crucial. “I suspect this kind of infighting is common in any building where people have to get along, but the amount of politicking here is a bit alarming,” they tell me. “I wish I knew how to get to some kind of truth.”

The truth, it seems, is not easy to come by at Middlewood Lodge. Singh, for example, insists the ultimate cause of all the trouble is a single leaseholder, who has “been attacking Mark and making slanderous accusations,” although he refuses to detail what these are. “Unfortunately he’s created a little band of followers,” he says. “He and the others should simply get on with life and follow the rules.”