The 20th Century To The Present
In 1914 Sheffield became a diocese of the Church of England, and the parish church became a cathedral. During World War I the Sheffield City Battalion suffered heavy losses at the Somme and Sheffield itself was bombed by a German zeppelin. The recession of the 1930s was only halted by the increasing tension as World War II loomed. The steel factories of Sheffield were set to work making weapons and ammunition for the war. As a result, once war was declared, the city once again became a target for bombing raids. In total there were 16 raids over Sheffield, however it was the heavy bombing over the nights of 12 December and 15 December 1940 (now known as the Sheffield Blitz) when the most substantial damage occurred. More than 660 lives were lost and numerous buildings were destroyed.
Following the war, the 1950s and 1960s saw many large scale developments in the city. The Sheffield Tramway was closed, and a new system of roads, including the Inner Ring Road, were laid out. Also at this time many of the old slums were cleared and replaced with housing schemes such as the Park Hill flats, and the Gleadless Valley estate.
Sheffield's traditional manufacturing industries (along with those of many other areas in the UK), declined during the 20th century.
The building of the Meadowhall shopping centre on the site of a former steelworks in 1990 was a mixed blessing, creating much needed jobs but speeding the decline of the city centre. Attempts to regenerate the city were kick-started by the hosting of the 1991 World Student Games and the associated building of new sporting facilities such as the Sheffield Arena, Don Valley Stadium and the Ponds Forge complex. Sheffield began construction of a tram system in 1992, with the first section opening in 1994. Starting in 1995, the Heart of the City Project has seen a number of public works in the city centre: the Peace Gardens were renovated in 1998, the Millennium Galleries opened in April 2001, and a 1970s town hall extension was demolished in 2002 to make way for the Winter Gardens, which opened on 22 May 2003. A number of other projects grouped under the title Sheffield One aim to regenerate the whole of the city centre.
On 25 June 2007, flooding caused millions of pounds worth of damage to buildings in the city and led to the loss of two lives.
Read more about this topic: History Of Sheffield
Famous quotes containing the words century and/or present:
“The nineteenth century planted the words which the twentieth ripened into the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler. There is hardly an atrocity committed in the twentieth century that was not foreshadowed or even advocated by some noble man of words in the nineteenth.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“For the first time in the history of mankind, one generation literally has the power to destroy the past, the present and the future, the power to bring time to an end.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)