Park Hill Estate, Sheffield: The retro images of iconic estate which have been hidden for more than 50 years

“I always say I was born in Pitsmoor, but I was made on Park Hill,” says Jones whose photographs of the estate now form a new book.

“There was a real sense of optimism about the place,” he recalls. “There were cameras here every other month from the BBC and all over the world because it was seen as the future.”

Jones remembers it feeling unlike anywhere else he had ever seen or experienced.

“It was an amazingly modern building,” he says. “You have to remember it was a council estate but you had underfloor heating and fitted kitchens. No council estate had ever had anything like it before. People didn’t lock their doors.

"There was a real community where everybody knew everybody, and everybody looked out for everybody. I call it a village within a city because it had shopping centres, a doctors, nursery, four pubs, everything you needed was there. It really was an amazing place.”

The newly built housing felt like a paradise after Jones’ childhood growing up in Pitsmoor, a former mining village.

“I had to go to a special school because I was a very ill child,” recalls Jones. “All the smog and crap in the air (where we grew up) affected my health even worse.” Although hard times continued even into Jones’ Park Hill years.

“In 1962 or ‘63, it was a really bad winter and my dad was out of work because of the snow,” he says.

“He had to go bankrupt because he couldn't pay taxes. So we went from being okay to all our furniture and the TV having to be sent back and the electricity being cut off. I had no shoes that didn’t have holes in them, so my mum went around the neighbours to see If she could get any cast offs.”

However, despite such challenging times, Jones was able to flourish through an artistic side to him that was being detected at school. His drawings and paintings were being picked out and celebrated, with him even winning prizes for his art.

“I wanted to be a graphic designer,” he remembers. “I applied for art college in 1968 and got in. So I started the graphic design course and one of the disciplines was photography. Because we were bottom end working class, with not a lot of money, I'd never seen a proper camera in my life. I literally didn't know one end from the other.”

However, Jones very quickly developed a natural eye.

“There was a chap called Roger Taylor who was the photography tutor and he gave us all these really expensive cameras,” Jones recalls.

“I took to it like a duck to water and he saw that in me and he really encouraged me.”

Jones quickly began shooting the city, and people, of Sheffield as well as his home of Park Hill. “I'm passionate about Park Hill,” he says. “I know it's a Marmite building but if you look into the history of why it was built, there was a real need. It had to be done that way to hold so many residents, as there were so many on waiting lists who were living in houses unfit for habitation.

"I loved living there and while a lot of photographers would come to Park Hill, I was always on the inside looking out, whereas all the others that came were on the outside looking in.”

However, Jones’ spell as a photographer was very brief. Lasting just two years.

“Everybody said ‘you should take it up as a career’,” he says. “So I decided I wanted to do photography. I had to go to Derby College of Art and Technology because they had full photographic colour facilities, whereas there was only black and white in Sheffield. But there was one drawback: I needed English O’Level.”

Jones sat the exam and failed it and then also failed the resit.

“So I never became a photographer,” he says. “In July 1970, my photography finished because that's when I had to hand the camera back.”

Jones went on to work in graphic design, and later financial services, with the bulk of his photographs sat undeveloped for almost 50 years until curiosity got the better of him around 2017.

“I thought I'd get a special scanner that can scan negatives and I was amazed at what I saw,” he recalls.

“I was like: did I really take these? So I started putting them on social media.”

The response was immediate and emphatic. “All of a sudden, people were saying: ‘these are amazing’,” he says.

The timing of the project seemed to be especially crucial to their success.

“When I first started to put these pictures on social media, it was during lockdown,” he reflects. “I think everybody really loved the idea of going back to the days when there wasn't a care in the world.”

Jones’s work also captured a vastly different Sheffield that seemingly connected with people’s memories of what the city used to look and feel like.

His pictures document another era altogether of different fashions, streets, transportation, and of buildings and landmarks - such as the beloved hole in the road - that no longer exist.

“The photos certainly seemed to touch a nerve,” he says. “Someone said you ought to publish a book, so we did, which ended up doing really well.”

View From the Hill was published in 2020 and now Jones has another book out via the Cafe Royal Books series, Park Hill, Sheffield 1969–1970. It comes after a period of keen interest in his work, including some celebrity supporters.

“Richard Hawley saw the work and has been a champion ever since,” Jones says.

“I ended up having a massive exhibition at the Crucible supporting the theatre production of Standing at the Sky’s Edge, which of course was set in Park Hill.

"Then as a result of that the people at the National Theatre in London saw my work and wanted to do the same for the production there. So as soon as you walked into the play outside in the foyer, all my work was there. I was pinching myself.”

It has resulted in many people encouraging Jones to pick up his one-time teenage hobby again but he is modest about his abilities.

“I’m a gifted amateur at best,” he says.

“People sometimes say, ‘why don't you take it up again because these photos are so good and you've got the eye?’ but I can't do that again. It was a time and a place which was perfect. I could never recreate that.”

So, no regrets about never living out his dream to be a photographer?

“It's the best thing that happened in a way,” he says. “Because my wife and I started our own business and made a lot of money. So it all ended well.

"Honestly, I'm just over the moon that there's interest in these photos. Even if it all ends here, that’s amazing. It’s been one a hell of a ride.”

Other photographs of Sheffield during the sixties and seventies can be found and are available to buy on Jones’s website including the The Castle Market, The Hole in the Road and Hyde Park Flats.

Park Hill, Sheffield 1969-1970 by Mick Jones is out now via Cafe Royal Books www.caferoyalbooks.com

mickjonesphotos.co.uk