We live in the Sheffield muesli-belt, full of stealth vans, vegan shops, musicians, allotments, street art, community gardeners, home educators and activists, rock climbers and serious cyclists, antique shops, junk shops, upcyclers and recyclers.
Our incredibly steep, local park is full of picnickers in summer, reggae playing from makeshift, home-rigged bike trailer sound-systems. People lounging and chatting, lined up at the top of the park, gazing out over the city and the valleys leading out to the Peak District National Park to the west and the M1 motorway to the east. Doubtless they are plotting; making plans for their European vanlife or their next climbing adventure.
In winter, the park becomes a huge toboggan run. In heavy snow, it seems as though the whole of Meersbrook is out hoiking sledges, toboggans, skis and snowboards up through the park for thrills.
Bishops’ House stands at the top of the park. At 464 years old, it is the oldest timber-framed house in the city and is open as a museum for visitors at weekends.
Meersbrook Park is also home to a number of community-driven, locally-focussed organisations which typify the area, and Sheffield in general. The Heeley Trust is a neighbourhood champion which aims to improve the lives of local people and protect green space. It is based in Meersbrook Hall, a Grade II listed former home of the Ruskin Museum, which has been given a new lease of life, providing courses and a community meeting point. The hall’s walled garden is run by Meersbrook Park Users Trust with support from Heeley City Farm and has been lovingly restored into a beautiful and productive space, open for community events, such as summer parties and Autumn apple days. The park is also bounded by two of the neighbourhood’s three allotment sites, the largest of which, Heeley and Meersbrook, covers an area almost equal to the size of the park itself.
We love our park, and we love our neighbourhood of free-thinking, creative, friendly, community-minded hummus dippers and salad munchers. It’s the ideal place to chill out, live frugally, plan our future, save money, and be inspired.
And some of us like to eat meat also.
We might not quite fit in with the utopian vision of the Meersbrook liberal elite that you describe, but it really doesn’t make us bad people, well not the kind of bad people that should be banished up the road to less free thinking, and unenlightened places such as Woodseats.
You’re absolutely right, Just a normal guy, there are lots of meat eaters in Meersbrook. I live with some and am therefore outnumbered in my own household. However, I love them dearly, despite their carnivorous ways, and would never banish them to Woodseats. Or to anywhere else without a Lidl.
Oh come on. I’m a lentil munching squeeze box player, but I don’t have lofty ideas about the area. I find those who do, wouldn’t even go in the park. They’re just aspirational types who don’t understand community.
It’s not about any of that. The community spirit comes from there being schools nearby, and a playground which facilitates meeting, and conversion with people you don’t yet know. I realise that the houses on Meersbrook park road and around the park are prohibitive to most people, but sliding down the hill in the snow is free. We’re lucky to have the park, and lucky that we have have a diverse community that appreciates it. I’m not clever enough to know what else makes this a nice place to live, but it’s nothing to do with some people being better than others.
I love that you are a lentil munching squeeze box player, but I have to disagree.
I have lived in many places with parks and schools and a diverse community, but have never before come across so many open-minded, tolerant, positive freethinkers as I have here. It’s the community that makes the schools and parks what they are, not the other way around.
Having said that, I do wonder whether the massive amount of allotment space nearby attracts more frugal, outdoor-loving, communal-minded people and that’s what makes this area so special.
Cost of living and affordable housing are issues in most places also, they don’t define Meersbrook.