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River Sheaf Wall Collapse
Oct 10th - Due to heavy rain undercutting foundations a riverside retaining wall has collapsed near Broadfield Road, badly damaging a pedestrian ramp and bridge to Saxon Road. The Sheffield Antiques Emporium building on Clyde Road has been affected and their upstairs showroom was briefly closed. Sheffield Council Highways and the Environment agency are assessing the situation. These ageing retaining walls, dating back to the 19th century are now regularly failing and causing a massive headache for riparian owners, the City Council and Environment Agency.
Sheffield
Antiques
Emporium
Annotated Google Earth view of the Clyde Road / Saxon Road reach where walls have become unstable
Oct 2024 view showing the collapsed wall and twisted bridge supports
Earlier Works...In 2021 the Trust told the Environment Agency that a retaining wall holding up an electricity sub station on the right bank was failing. The Agency carried out emergency works to install 4 temporary culvert pipes as shown in the video. A new concrete retaining wall was later built with sheet piled footings considerably narrowing the low stage flow channel.
In 2021 the riverside wall behind the new Jamia Masjid Mosque on Leyburn Road totally collapsed into the river.
This old stone wall, also difficult to reach and just a quarter of a mile upstream of the Broadfield Road collapse was totally rebuilt by young volunteers and craftsmen from the islamic community . A year later the next wall section collapsed and was also rebuilt by the community. All the stone that fell into the river was recycled but it involved a lot of graft!
When we are faced with repairing this Victorian infrastructure can we afford our risk averse engineers and politicians nowadays?
This archive photo courtesy of Simon Legge shows the River Sheaf at Broadfield Road with the river almost overtopping the flood defence wall...can you imagine what Broadfield Road would look like if this wall collapsed too?
At this point the river is backed up due to the sharp turn the river makes at the narrow and low Saxon Road bridge. The now closed bridge ramp can be seen in the foreground.
The City Council have been carrying out flood risk assessments of the River Sheaf for several years and we are pressing for consultation on the proposed defence strategy.
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