BurtonStreetHistory.org.uk
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Description
The Burton Street Community History Project explores the history of the former Langsett Road School and neighbourhood, using oral history, written reminiscence, photographs and personal documents. Situated in the Owlerton district of Sheffield, close to Hillsborough, Langsett Road School is now the Burton Street Project, a well-known and much valued part of the local community. It is currently used by over 1500 people a week – slightly more than the number of children who attended the school daily until the 1970s.
Many of the Burton Street site users attended the school and in fact many Sheffield people still know the Burton Street Project as “the old school”. The streets around the school were once lined with terraced housing, densely populated with people who worked within a short distance of where they lived and whose children attended Langsett Road School. This community is now dispersed, the housing demolished in the Seventies and replaced by a few industrial units and corners of wasteground.
The project aims to ensure that memories connected with the area, the building and its time as a school are collected before it becomes too late to do so. These memories are at risk of being lost as former school pupils become older and die. Preserving the memories in the building which is itself the focus of those memories, contributes to the continued value of the building as a piece of local heritage. The project also gives value to the lives of ordinary people and enables future generations to gain an understanding of a particular period of local history.
