Sheffield

Sheffield is technically in South Yorkshire, which is a distinction some Yorkshiremen feel strongly about and others regard as administrative pedantry. What it undeniably is, is interesting — a city that has had to reckon more honestly with its post-industrial identity than almost anywhere in England, and has done so more creatively than most. The steel works are mostly gone. What replaced them, over thirty years and without a coherent plan, is a city that makes most of its own beer, built one of England’s most respected music scenes, and watches the Peak District from its western neighborhoods like a backdrop that keeps getting closer.

I came by train from York, which takes about an hour through flat agricultural land that gives no indication of what’s coming. Sheffield’s topography — seven hills, multiple river valleys, the terrain rising steeply to the west — announces itself only when you’re in it.

The Kelham Island Quarter

Kelham Island is an area of former industrial buildings on an artificial island in the River Don that has been colonized by craft breweries, independent shops, artists’ studios, and restaurants at a speed that suggests the space was ready for something even before anyone decided what. The Kelham Island Museum, in a Victorian generating station, tells the story of Sheffield’s cutlery and steel industries with enough original machinery — the River Don Engine, a 12,000-horsepower steam engine that powered a rolling mill — that the scale of what Sheffield used to do is viscerally communicated.

The Taps and the Kelham Island Tavern nearby are two of the city’s best pubs, both in buildings that have been pubs for over a century and both serving Sheffield-brewed ale with the kind of directness that pub culture does well when it’s not performing for visitors.

The Moors on the Doorstep

What makes Sheffield unusual in the context of English cities is the proximity of the Peak District’s eastern moors. Stanage Edge — a gritstone escarpment running for about four miles above the Derbyshire plateau, one of the most popular rock-climbing venues in England — is twenty minutes by bus from the city center. I went on a Sunday morning and shared the edge with Sheffield climbers doing weekend routes and walkers doing the long ridge path, and at the western side the view opened up over Hathersage and down into the Hope Valley.

The walks accessible directly from Sheffield’s western neighborhoods don’t require a car or bus — Endcliffe Park gives way to the Porter Valley and eventually to open moorland within walking distance of the city’s student residential areas. This particular accident of geography means Sheffield residents routinely do things with their Saturday mornings that residents of most English cities would need to plan two hours of driving to achieve.

Music and Culture

Sheffield’s music history — Joy Division evolved into New Order here, the Human League and ABC were Sheffield bands, Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker is essentially the city’s patron saint of wry social observation — has generated a creative culture that persists past the nostalgia. The Leadmill venue has been running since 1980. Record shops are numerous and serious. The Showroom cinema is one of the best independent screens in the north of England.

The Millennium Gallery on Tudor Square, connected to the Winter Garden — a large temperate greenhouse in the city center that functions as a public park — holds the Ruskin Collection, donated by John Ruskin as part of his project to bring good art to industrial workers. The paintings are minor Ruskins but the gesture is interesting and the context makes them more so.

The Food

Sheffield’s food culture is less discussed than Leeds’s but more functional in the sense that it’s built around feeding a city rather than impressing critics. The Moor Market, rebuilt in 2013 on the site of an older market, has good food stalls and local produce. The cafe culture in Kelham Island and Sharrow has expanded steadily, and the cluster of restaurants around Ecclesall Road covers most cuisines and price points without much fuss.

When to go: April through October for walking the Peak District edge in reasonable conditions. The winter light in Sheffield is low and grey, which suits the architecture but makes outdoor activity grim. The cultural season runs year-round, with the Tramlines festival in late July bringing large crowds to the city parks. Accommodation is cheaper than Leeds and York, which is not an incidental consideration.