Sheffield Peace Gardens Fountain

by Dorothy Berry-Lound

The Peace Gardens are an inner city square in Sheffield, England as you can see from the buildings (and construction crane) in this short. It was created as part of the Heart of the City project by Sheffield City Council (a £120 million regeneration project). The Peace Gardens has fountains in the middle and colourful cascades around the outside (as shown here) to represent the flowing molten steel which made Sheffield famous. The water features also represent the Sheffield Rivers which used to power the mills for Sheffield's industry.

The Peace Gardens front onto Sheffield's gothic town hall and has won many awards. The gardens were first laid out in 1938 and originally named St Paul's Gardens after the demolition of St Paul's Church, but they were almost immediately given the nickname Peace Gardens marking the signing of the Munich agreement (in September 1938, when Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, met Adolf Hitler at his home in Berchtesgaden. Hitler threatened to invade Czechoslovakia unless Britain supported Germany's plans to take over the Sudetenland).

The Gardens were originally intended to be replaced by an extension to the Town Hall, but due to World War II, this was never happened and in 1985 the area was formally renamed the Peace Gardens.

The site contains several memorials for Sheffield citizens who served in various wars, as well as a memorial to Hiroshima.