The British Land Company PLC: River Don Development - Historic Environment. EIA Chapter and Appendices.

In November 2007, ARCUS were commissioned by Day Management Ltd on behalf of The British Land Company PLC to undertake an archaeological buildings appraisal at the site of the former Staybrite Works and Brightside Works on Weedon Street, Carbrook Street and Vulcan Road, ShefÏeld, South Yorkshire. The appraisal was intended to inform an Environmental Impact Assessment chapter on aspects of the historic environment of the site, and to outline a potential mitigation strategy for mixed use redevelopment of the sites as part of River Don District Masterplan. Development Plot 1, formerly the eastern half of Jessops Brightside Works, has been cleared of historic buildings, apart from stretches of brick walling along Carbrook Street. The wall preserves elements of the sides of several buildings, mainly of mid- 20th-century date. Plot 2 contains only a brick boundary wall, part of the external wall of a building shown in 1955. Plots 3-4 consist of the site of the Staybrite Works, which was built in 1907 as the Tinsley Works of Thomas Firth and Co Ltd. The original works consisted of crucible steel and rolling mill departments, comprising gas-powered crucible furnaces and associated ancillary buildings, along with one of the first rolling mills in the country to be entirely electrically powered. The shell of the rolling mill building and a significant part of the former electricity generating power house survive. By the 1930s the works was being used exclusively for the production of stainless steel, and was renamed the Staybrite Works, operated jointly by Firth-Brown and the English Steel Corporation under the name Firth Vickers. The eastern part of the works was demolished in the late 1980s, and the original ofÏce buildings on the Weedon Street frontage were recently demolished. The assessment of the surviving standing buildings has identified 19 structures, including fragments preserved as boundary walls. Of these, ten structures or fragments (three in Plot 1, seven in Plots 3-4) are considered to be of archaeological significance, relating to the development of the steelworks, and would benefit from a further programme of archaeological recording. These include remains of the early 20th-century rolling mill building and power house.