A development of much character, internationally renowned and described as a modernist icon. They are much loved and much hated in equal measure. Park Hill is the largest listed building in Britain. The flats were conceived of as one scheme with the nearby Hyde Park flats. They consist of four blocks of varying height with the topography of the hill incorporated into the design to give a continuous level roof. The ground floor contained a shopping centre, laundry, police station and pubs. Schools were built in the courtyards. Household refuse was burnt in an incinerator to provide heat for the flats. The incinerator is no longer operational and may have been removed. The architects wanted to recreate traditional working class street life and so wide access decks were intended to create 'streets in the sky'. Precedents include apartments in Moscow, Quarry Hill flats in Leeds and most famously, Le Corbusier's Unite d' Habitation in Marseille. Park Hill was the first design to combine social facilities with decks that could be accessed from the ground and which continued through several blocks. See Harman & Minnis 2004, 207-211and Hey 1998, 232-233 for more information. The access decks took their names from the streets that were cleared to provide room for the new development. The site was partly chosen because it had the longest outstanding clearance order in Sheffield. Prior to the clearance the site consisted predominantly of back-to-back and courtyard houses. These are depicted on the 1st edition OS map of 1855. The area is also shown as heavily developed on the Taylor map of 1832. The Fairbanks plan of 1808, however, shows development just beginning with the predominant feature of the area being gardens- probably allotments associated with the nearby fast increasing workers housing. The 1795 Fairbanks plan shows the area consisting of fields which were probably enclosed in a piecemeal fashion from Sheffield Park. Invisible legibility of earlier historic landscapes.