Rooftopping the NUM building, Sheffield
It'd been a long time since we'd done any exploring or rooftopping in Sheffield so me and my good friend jazzywheelz decided we'd better go and re-aquaint ourselves with the city.
We spent a couple of nights walking around Sheffield city centre seeing what was new and what opportunities there were. After a few promising leads and a large amount of fails we ended up at the former National Union of Mineworkers building, by Sheffield City Hall, purely by chance.
The interior has been completely stripped of anything worth seeing - or so we thought (some post-explore-research by jazzywheelz found that there is a huge Italian marble frieze depicting mine workers, as well as a tiled area of floor overlooking Barker's Pool which was part of Arthur Scargill's office and served as his "lookout". To be fair though, the frieze was hidden behind scaffolding and Scargill's lookout was literally just a small area of tiles that remained in the corner of an otherwise empty floor, so we didn't stop to take photos; something we both regret and which might necessitate a revisit!).
You can read a little about the history of the building on Wikipedia but Googling Arthur Scargill himself and reading about the Miner's Strike - a key event of the 1980's - will reveal why this is such a historically important building.
But back to the night me and jazzywheelz were there. We were looking for rooftops and had found one.
Gurning is optional...
The back of the building gives some interesting views towards the former BT Telephone House, Grosvenor Hotel, and further up over West Street and towards the Royal Hallamshire hospital.
Views to the rear of City Hall were spoiled a little by all the protruding scaffold!
Looking over towards St. Paul's Tower, another former conquest.
The front entrance has a great smoked-glass top over the vestibule.
And this was the view we enjoyed. Sat for a while taking in our first rooftop in far too long. It didn't offer the best views we've had over Sheffield, but from where we were we could see loads of rooftops we'd conquered in the past, like the Town Hall Clock Tower, inspiring us to get back out there and see what we could find. Hopefully much more to come in future!
