Transformation of ex-Sheffield cutlery works to kickstart huge 'Mesters' Village' housing project

“All cities, all towns have a strong sense of their industrial past,” he says. “The look and feel of a cutlery works is very different to the mills over in Manchester, for example. It’s really important to hang onto that,otherwise we just end up with Identikit city centres.”

Capital & Centric have already carved a reputation for bringing new life to post-industrial premises; with their Crusader project in Piccadilly East, Manchester, for example, they turned a 200-year-old cotton mill into contemporary loft apartments with large outdoor pet-friendly gardens, barbeques and fire-pits.

Famously, they banned investors to encourage owner-occupiers to buy and contribute to what Higgins calls “a proper community”.

Work is now underway transforming the three-storey red-brick Grade II-listed Victorian Eyewitness Works building, dating from 1852, and the adjacent Ceylon Works, into 97 loft apartments and new-build townhouses, plus commercial space including a café/bar.

The ambitious £21m scheme, which Higgins sees as the cornerstone of a new 15-acre ‘Mesters’ Village’, the largely undeveloped streets, car-parks and weed- infested empty lots between the Devonshire Quarter and the retail area around The Moor, will be released for sale in early 2022. To register interest, visit https://www.capitalandcentric.com/eyewitness

Mesters’ Village, which Sheffield City Council is keen to get established, could eventually have more than 2,500 homes, workspaces and a school, if Capital & Centric’s long-term plans work out.

The curious name for this brand-new area of Sheffield city centre has its roots in history; ‘mesters’ was the traditional name for the craftsmen who worked in the city’s world-famous cutlery trade.

As well as playing host to a new Channel 4 interiors show, Design YourDream – with the winner receiving their very own two-bedroomed loftapartment – Eyewitness Works is remarkable because Capital & Centric have brokered funding from the South Yorkshire Pension Fund and Homes England, which means that they are not having to sell units off-plan to investors in order to finance progress.

“We have not been forced into a situation where we’ve had to pre-sell,” explains Higgins.

“I do think that [in city centres] people should be able to rent or buy, but it does create a less transient society if we can allow people to put down roots.”

The development of Eyewitness Works is a welcome sight in Sheffield city centre in general.

With the future of the former John Lewis department store still uncertain, since it closed its doors for the last time in the summer of 2021, and now in the hands of Sheffield City Council, which took over the lease in January, there’s been more than a sense of unease.

And mistakes have been made in the past; the 22-storey Velocity Tower, on the edge of the Mesters’ Village next to the Inner Ring Road,was heralded as a new dawn in Sheffield city living when it launched in 2007.

It was built by Velocity Estates, which went into administration in 2010. However, the long-neglected building is now being given a massive refurb, and will have 160 fully-furnished studio and one and two-bedroom apartments available for sale, from the end of September,enquiries to [email protected] to the council, the city centre population has increased fromless than 3,000 to 27,000 in the last two decades. The redevelopment of other key post-industrial sites such as Kelham Island has been influential in this, and also the plethora of student accommodation.

Indeed, the Mesters’ Village area already includes Cosmos, a hugestudent housing scheme boasting proximity to Sheffield HallamUniversity, a 12-minute walk and the University of Sheffield, five minutes’ further.

Higgins, who studied in Leeds, “and lived in scruffy terraced houses” says that whilst students create a lively atmosphere in city centres, for longevity, homes must be created to encourage young professionals and families to put down roots.Peter Lee, director of Sheffield estate agency Redbrik, say he’s seeing“a real return to urban living since the pandemic. The number of tenants and buyers in rural areas searching for city centre properties has jumped, and the number of those in cities enquiring about ruralproperties is declining.”Lee is pleased that the new buzz in Sheffield city centre has attractedmany homemakers back inside the ring road: “Burgess House, adevelopment available only to homeowners, of stunning city centreapartments in the Heart of the City development, has proved particularly popular. It is also interesting to see the upper limit raised with three-bed apartments in Burgess House selling for as high as £357,000. The highest values three or four years ago would have been around £275,000.”He is confident that there is a demand for new homes in Sheffield citycentre, and can even report the first stirrings of a new trend; Sheffield as a second-home hotspot.

“Many think it is still a space for investors and renters,” he says. “But we’re seeing increasing demand from buyers looking to purchase either their main residence or a second residence in the city centre, to supplement a more rural home out of the city.”