Staff changes at Solly Street

The Spring editions of the GA's journals are now out, and the GA Magazine has a staffing update - and a new look.

I wish Isabel Richardson all the best for her new role and adventure. 

She was very important to my own GA Presidential journey as the CPD and Events co-ordinator she got me involved in lots of GA activity as well as organising my conference at the University of Surrey in Guildford in 2022 - a hybrid event which added extra complexity to the proceedings.

She was also busy resorting the GA Archive and also helping with finalising the Geographer's Gaze project which I was part of.

Good luck to Liam who takes over the role. I look forward to catching up at the GA Conference in Sheffield in a couple of months' time.

8 years ago today

The view opposite Solly Street has changed a lot since. I remember watching foxes in the grounds of the old church....

The ultimate GA souvenir

If anyone wants the ultimate Geographical Association souvenir, one has come up for sale...

This blog has provided details of all the previous homes of the GA.... from Aberystwyth, to Manchester to Sheffield and others...

The second picture shows the stacks I delved into for days to help produce this blog, and the third shows the mysterious lower floor which few have explored...

It will be interesting to see where the Association moves next. Interesting times, and a good decision given the nature of the GA's current work and education generally.

From the archive - Fleure to Mill 2 - Christmas 1933

Another letter from H J Fleure to Hugh Robert Mill. I love these old letters in the GA Archives. I plan to go up to Solly Street this coming summer to spend a day delving into someof the boxes that I didn't manage to get into last time I went, which is too long ago, and take lots more pictures. 

This was the era when Fleure was in Manchester rather than Aberystwyth, and he is sad that Mill is no longer chairing GA meetings, but says that:

 "the Association is now, I hope, on its feet and able to walk erect"

This was down to some financial prudence from W.A. Cadbury.

The death of T.W.Sowerbutts of the Manchester Geographical Society is also noted.

He finishes by noting the growth in people taking geography as a subject in examinations. A promising trend.

Carole Porter

If you have received a parcel from the Geographical Association's shop in the last decade or more, there's a fair chance that it was packaged and processed by Carole Porter. 

Carole worked at Solly Street for over 25 years as Sales Administrator having joined in 1996. If you have ever attended the GA Conference, you have probably met Carole as she worked on the GA's stand. If you've ever rung the GA HQ you may well have spoken to Carole too. I was very happy to have Carole as a colleague when I worked there.

Carole retired at Christmas 2023, and I wish her a very happy retirement.

From the archive - technology in 1934

I visited the GA archives in Solly Street earlier this week.

Here's an example of educational technology from 1934 from the pages of the Scottish Educational Journal.

A Geographer's Gaze

A couple of months ago, I went up to Solly Street to have another meeting for our Geographers' Gaze project.

We have identified some images from the archive and have created some lesson materials for their use in a number of contexts. They will be appearing on the GA website in 2022, along with other guidance for using images generally and a little context about the significance of lantern slides in the GA's history (and geography).

Thanks to the other members of the team, and to Brian Ellis for funding the project.

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license

2021: Alan Parkinson (that's me...)

Updated June 2024

The final entry for the blog - at least for a while - is a post about me. 

I'm Head of Geography at King's Ely Prep, and also an author and consultant geographer. I'm a Chartered Geographer and Fellow of the RGS and RSGS.

For what I get up to, please visit, and subscribe to my main blog, which is called Living Geography, and follow the development of my Quotidian Geographies project during 2021.

I will also add other blog posts here from time to time through the following year, before the next President as I have the chance to go into the archives.

You can also follow the #POTGA21 hashtag during this year as well as #everydaygeographies.

I was born in the Listerdale Maternity Hospital, to the East of Rotherham in late December 1963. I lived in the village of Wickersley and went to Northfield Lane Infants and then Junior School before going on to Wickersley Comprehensive School. This was formerly Wickersley High School (many of our folders still had the old name) and also had ROSLA extensions after the raising of the school leaving age, and a classic 1970s construction. My journey to school involved walking over the blue bridge here, with distant views of the Peak District and Sheffield.

Image: Alan Parkinson

Miss Moon was my teacher in Year 8, then I had John Neale and Steve Hanstock amongst others. I still have my exercise books from that time. I moved to a house on the main Bawtry Road shown above during my secondary days. I got an 'A' in my 'O' level Geography, and stayed on to do 'A' levels at the school.

I was really interested in computers too, and our science teacher Doc Humphries had an Apple II computer in a locked-up trolley at the back of his lab. I used to stay behind one or two evenings a week after school and teach myself to programme the machine, and used magazines and books to find out more about how it worked. I took 'O' level Computer Science and ended up teaching GCSE and A level Computer Science as well as Geography for a while.

Taking Computer Science also meant that we would travel on an old double decker bus operated by Powell's coaches, and head for Dinnington College to actually access some computers - RM machines with green graphics on black screens, and machine coded. 

I did quite well in my 'A' levels, and the big success was Geography for me. My teacher was Steve Hanstock who was personable and a good teacher.

John Neale was another of my teachers, who it turned out worked with John Lyon, who later became a colleague at the GA.

Our notes were often banda duplicated, and had lots of information and diagrams and spaces to fill at GCSE, but as we got more into geography, we had more lecture-style lessons.
When I opened my 'A' level results in August 1982, I had the grades to head for either Lancaster University or Huddersfield Polytechnic, but chose the course which would be more practical and fieldwork based, and also physical geography based as that was my interest back then. I also had plans to return home more than once or twice a year and Huddersfield wasn't too far away from Rotherham.
As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, in entries describing Huddersfield and the connections with other GA members, it is clear that this was a good proving ground for some young lecturers including Tim Burt and David Butcher amongst others.
A few images of me emerged on a local Facebook page, and also another dedicated to those who 'survived Huddersfield Polytechnic'.

Image: Sally Stow. I'm the one in the yellow and black hat. I haven't changed a bit.

I graduated with a II, i and was not sure what to do with myself.

Teaching was an option as my mother was a lecturer at the time at Dinnington College of Further Education. I took a Computer Science 'A' level at Rotherham College of Arts and Technology, which involved learning other computer languages and gave me the time to read, and play a lot of golf. 

I went for several interviews for PGCE courses, and was eventually accepted at the University of Hull by Vincent Tidswell, who was in his final year as PGCE tutor. He appears on this blog of course as I later found out he was involved with the GA and wrote a number of influential books.

After finishing the course, I eventually found work. The first school I actually earned money from teaching in was Kimberworth Park in Rotherham - now demolished and famous for being the school where former England goalkeeper David Seaman. Ironically, I now teach at the school where Nick Pope - an England goalkeeper in the last year - was taught.

Here's the 'fun' biography I put on GeographyPages in 2006. It's a little out of date now of course, but includes some interesting snippets. Geography Pages was my website I started creating in 2001, and which became one of the most popular websites of the time (as one of the few websites of the time) gaining millions of page views a year (and costing me a lot of money to maintain)

Born on a sheer mountain side in South Yorkshire in the early 1960's during a blizzard, Mister P was educated at the local 'comp' and enjoyed moderate success (9 'O' & 5 'A' levels) before moving on to Huddersfield Polytechnic (when polys were polys) and spent the next 3 years pushing the Atterberg limits, enjoying the mid-1980's price of beer, checking tensiometer readings at Bicknoller, criss-crossing the Pennines in a land rover with a radioactive soil moisture probe.

He has taught at various schools in Derbyshire (the good old Amber valley), East and South Yorkshire, and at  King Edward VII School: a specialist Sports College, in King's Lynn, Norfolk where he is Head of Geography, and edits the school newsletter, amongst other things. In his time at the school he has overseen the introduction of the Geography National Curriculum, run the Duke of Edinburgh's Award group, been Activities Coordinator, Deputy Head of House, and for a year was acting Examinations Officer. 

A founder member of the sadly-missed Boiled Onions Climbing Club, he enjoys foreign and UK travel, hill-walking when he gets the chance, landscape photography, obscure travel literature, Scandinavian Jazz, open fires, a good tight end in a game of bowls, beachcombing on the North Norfolk coast and fine malt whiskies. The Old Hunstanton side he plays for won the Countryside League Knockout cup in 2005.

He completed a DfES Best Practice research scholarship on the use of ICT, particularly the Internet in improving the quality of teaching in Geography (2002) which is published online and has been referred to by other academic researchers, and also completed an Online course on Climate Change run by the University of East Anglia. He is an ICT consultant to 'silver surfers' in the North Norfolk area. He is also involved in various web-based interests, including 'Evaluate' (his software evaluations are featured on the website and have been published in 'The Guardian' as have contributions to 'Brainstrust')

In November 2003 he was awarded a Royal Geographical Society Innovative Geography Teaching Grant to develop the GEO BLOGS project. Blogs have come on substantially since 2003 and are now almost so mainstream that they are commonplace, but it was good to get in there at the start.

In May 2004 he was invited to join the Geographical Association's Secondary Education Committee (now Secondary Phase Committee). He had an article published in the October 2004 issue of 'Teaching Geography', and was an E:port representative of the DfES/Evaluate/Schoolzone at DfES ICT in Geography roadshow and BETT 2005 and 2006. He has also been a contributing author to GeoProjects  (http://www.geoprojects.co.uk) and has also done consultancy and writing work for Hodder and Pearson and 3 or 4 other publishers. He was Editorial consultant on the new Longman School Atlas, which was published in April 2006, and has also contributed to ideas and materials for the new BBC Digital Curriculum.

He has delivered ICT workshops at numerous Norfolk Geography conferences, and network meetings, and has also presented at the GA Conference, and the SAGT Conference in 2005, and will be once again in 2006. In August 2005, he became a Teacher Consultant for the Geographical Association, and is currently doing 'various consultancy-type-things...'

In October 2005 he was awarded a second Royal Geographical Society Innovative Geography Teaching Grant to develop the EARTH: A Users' Guide project. He'd appreciate it if you got involved.

2006 contributions to the milieu include: contributions to Brainstrust / Evaluate publication, Longman School Atlas published, article published in Pilot News, guest edited WebWatch section of GA News for May 2006 and invited to join the editorial committee of GA Magazine, teacher notes and curriculum maps produced for the RGS-IBG Discovering Antarctica website (launched June 2006), best of the web feature for Teachers TV (coming in September), contributions to working groups in Norfolk on SEN and Pilot GCSE. He is also involved in further Pilot GCSE developments to be announced shortly as part of the Action Plan for Geography. In 2006 he was awarded a 'Norfolk Geogers' award for contributions to Norfolk Geography. 

Image: showing the KES fleeces we used to wear for a while... taken around 2006.

In early 2008, I saw an ad for a post at the Geographical Association, and put in a speculative application for what was going to be my 'perfect' job, despite having a bit of 'imposter syndrome' about being up to a national role.

This was a good year, as I was also awarded the Ordnance Survey Award for Excellence in Secondary Geography Teaching by the RGS-IBG. Here I am prior to all that, and prior to the interview, presenting at the GA Conference as part of the authoring team for the new KS3 toolkit series.

In 2010, we published the first of the Mission:Explore books, written by the Geography Collective, which started with a conversation between Daniel Raven Ellison and myself. I am very proud of the work we completed together, with other members of the Geography Collective, and latterly with Helen Leigh and Tom Morgan-Jones.

Here's the motherlode: the 500+ missions that we wrote as a team, and then asked young people to select so that Tom Morgan Jones could do the inking.

Chatting to Anne Robertson of EDINA, with whom I've worked for quite a few years now.

In 2011, my job was sadly made redundant as a result of financial fallout from the end of the Action Plan for Geography.

I put out an appeal for help.

This led to two years of freelance work, with plenty of ERASMUS thrown in.

In 2013 I received a nice email from Mike Robinson, the Chief Executive of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, explaining that I had been awarded the RSGS's Joy Tivy Education Medal and Honorary Fellowship - a great honour.

I also received an email from Claire Kyndt of King's Ely. This resulted in me returning to the classroom for a second stint, where I remain to the present day.

In 2017, I got an email suggesting that I might make a good President, and asking whether I would put myself forward. I duly did, and the rest is... geography.

My Presidential theme is 'Everyday Geographies' or 'Quotidian Geographies'.

There are a great many people I haven't mentioned here who I owe a great debt too... these will be mentioned in future posts in the year ahead, and also in my Presidential lecture.

References

I have written, co-written or contributed to over 30 books, including KS3, GCSE, Fieldwork and A level textbooks, children's books, adventure books and eBooks.

Charney 20th Anniversary book, edited by Simon Catling - has a chapter called 'You can take the boy out of Yorkshire' which included a sort of autobiography as well - I think on hindsight that's one of the better shorter things that I've written.

Why not buy at least one copy of my book 'Why Study Geography'? - it's excellent.

Full biography on my About.me page.

Updates

I'm always creating and sharing resources.

Currently working on the Oak National Primary project as a writer and reviewer through into 2025...

Updated June 2024

On the 3rd of June, I was elected as the Vice President: Education of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) for the next 4 years.

I am proud to be continuing the tradition of GA Presidents being associated with the RGS-IBG in many different ways, going back to Freshfield. I am looking forward to supporting the work of the RGS-IBG in supporting geography educators.

2008 - Working for the GA

It was in September 2008 that I started work for the Geographical Association. I worked there for three years, and it was the best time of my professional life and every day was CPD as I travelled across the UK and Europe, learning, writing, teaching and pushing forward the idea of what school geography could be.

I worked with many wonderful geographers, and had the chance to visit hundreds of schools and work with thousands of teachers as we worked to deliver the projects funded by the Action Plan for Geography and meet the KPI targets.

See the recent post on John Lyon for more on the time we worked together at Solly Street.

I kept notebooks all the way through that period of three years, to jot down everything I was doing, and also keep agendas of meetings etc.

Here they are:

When my job was made redundant I was bereft and thanks to many people who offered me some help in the next few years. I thanked them here.

Particular thanks as always to Claire Kyndt for changing that around 8 years ago.

Alan Kinder - Chief Executive

Alan Kinder was appointed as the Chief Executive of the GA in 2012, taking office in September of that year. I'd known Alan since 2005 ish when we first started working on the books which were the original editions in the KS3 Teacher Toolkit - others have been added to the series since.

Alan also served on, and was co-chair of Secondary Phase Committee for a while when I also served on the committee.

Here's the announcement of Alan's appointment as David Lambert's replacement as Chief Executive on the GA website back in 2012, thanks to the Wayback Machine.

Alan had a varied career before becoming the Chief Executive, involving himself in many aspects of the subject, and the different groups the GA engages with.

There is a brief biography on the GA website.

Alan has had a wide variety of roles within geographical education: geography teacher, school and curriculum leader, field studies officer, local authority adviser, PGCE tutor and educational consultant. 

His work has taken him from the south coast of England to South Yorkshire and from continental Europe to South-East Asia, giving him the opportunity to work with hundreds of schools from across the UK and further afield. 

Alan has written and contributed to a large body of professional and curriculum materials: books, CPD courses, newspaper and journal articles and website materials on behalf of organisations including the Geographical Association, Oxford University Press, Routledge, the Prince’s Teaching Institute, Times Educational Supplement, RGS-IBG and many others. He is, with John Widdowson, the series co-editor of the GA's award-winning Key Stage 3 Geography Teacher's Toolkit.

Alan has played a key role in advising government on curriculum matters over many years and has had a significant influence on the content and structure of the national curriculum for geography. He was a member of the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA) panel which advised on English national curriculum reforms in 2008 and reformed A levels that same year. 

Alan was also a national advisor for the implementation of the 2008 Key Stage 3 curriculum in schools. In 2012 he joined the Department for Education’s (DfE’s) subject expert group to advise the Government on the 2014 National Curriculum and GCSE subject criteria for geography from 2016; he was a member of the Geography Expert Subject Advisory Group (GESAG) for the implementation of the 2014 national curriculum and a member of the A Level Content Advisory Board (ALCAB) geography panel, responsible for advising the DfE on A level geography content criteria from 2016. 

Alan has advised the QCDA on national assessment initiatives and Ofqual, the qualification regulator, on specification regulation.

He currently sits on the Council for British Geography (COBRIG), is a Director of the Council for Subject Associations (CfSA), a virtual editorial board member and regular contributor to the SecEd educational newspaper and a corresponding member of the International Geographical Union Commission on Geographical Education (IGU-CGE) UK sub-committee. 

In 2017 he joined the University Of Sheffield Department of Geography’s advisory board.

As a long-standing member of the Geographical Association, Alan served on the GA's Secondary Phase Committee between 1998 and 2008 (Co-Chair 2005-8), chaired its Education Committee from 2009-12 and served as a member of the GA Governing Body from 2009-12. 

Alan's role is tremendously varied and challenging and I have hugely valued his support for my own Presidential journey, and his thoughtful and measured approach to all meetings. The final year has been particularly demanding on Alan and all the staff at GA HQ. Alan will hopefully not mind me mentioning that he has a few more grey hairs in his beard... as do I, but have come through it remarkably well and we are in a good place going forward.

Alan has contributed numerous articles to GA publications over the years, as well as chapters in the Secondary Handbook. He co-writes a Policy Matters column in the GA magazine each issue, along with the President.

I have learned a great deal working with Alan during my time as Junior Vice and Vice President, and look forward to working with him and the team at Solly Street over the next two years.

Image: Bryan Ledgard - Alan K with John Lyon at the Association at Work day.

John Lyon

Alongside the Presidents, this blog also features other notable figures from the GA.

One of my best professional experiences was working with John Lyon for three years at Solly Street in Sheffield when I was the GA's Secondary Curriculum Development Leader during the 2nd half of the Action Plan for Geography.

John had a long career as a teacher in the Rotherham and Sheffield area, eventually becoming a Deputy Head in Anston, a place I visited regularly when I was at school as I had friends who lived there, and used to cycle over from my home in Wickersley. 

He worked as the GA's Programme Director, which meant he had oversight of many of the GA's activity strands, with an eye on the bigger picture. I was more the 'ideas man'... some of which were good :)

John was involved in a great many GA projects, whether coordinating them, or contributing to them. He has served on the moderating team for the GA's Quality Marks for many years as well. He was involved in a BECTa funded ICT project and the Making my Place in the World project - working with young people in Sheffield. He and I presented a number of times at GA Conference, including a session with Michael Solem from the AAG. He was also involved in the early stages of the I-USE project which was Erasmus funded.

He is one of the authors of the 'Progress in Geography' textbook published by Hodder.

He has contributed to GA journals over the years, and worked to write resources for a whole range of areas of the GA's work.

John is also the host of the GA's Podcast series, which has to date interviewed around 40 people and produced an hour long-ish discussion each time with supporting resources. Hunt out GeogPod, particularly the episodes where he interviews people such as Margaret Roberts.

You can listen to them on the GA website, or on all the usual streaming services such as Spotify.

Here he is on a Worldwise Weekend with Nick Lapthorn - another former GA President. He has been involved with Worldwise and the Worldwise Challenge for some time, and this led to involvement in the International Geography Olympiad eveents - iGEO.

John is a keen cyclist and runner, and lives high up in the Peak District in a perfect place to carry out these hobbies. He also acts as quiz master on the GA Conference quizzes which are very popular.

As mentioned, John was also one of the writers who worked on this textbook, of which I have a few copies in my classroom.

John also serves on the Physical Geography SIG. This is one of the GA's SIGs or Special Interest Groups.

Other memories of, and embarrassing stories about, John very welcome as always.

Association at Work - with Alan Kinder - image Bryan Ledgard

Images for Warrington

Another find from the GA Archives at Solly Street. In 1938, Thomas Cotterill Warrington was seemingly asking a whole range of GA volunteers to send him images from wherever they were travelling, or perhaps of specific locations for a book that he was compiling. I discovered a whole stack of replies to his request. This envelope was sent by Stanley Beaver, who was later to become GA President. At the time, the GA was based in Manchester as you can see from the address on the envelope.

This was labelled as mid-Severn. There were several pictures in the envelope, which also included pictures of Ironbridge Gorge from Stanley Beaver taken in 1938. Here's one below. The quality of reproduction is really good on these little prints.

Here is a letter from Percy Rowley, who was the Honorary Secretary of the Shewsbury and District Branch at the time, accompanying some images that he had provided.

And here are some images which were sent by James Fairgrieve, showing the South Wales valleys and coal mining villages.

I will return to these images on my next visit to Solly Street and investigate further.

Useful additional colour for the 'A Geographer's Gaze' project.

Thomas Cotterill Warrington was GA President from 1942-1945.

Down in the stacks

After over two years, I was able to head to Solly Street earlier in the week to do some of the research that I would otherwise have been doing throughout the creation of this blog.

In the 'basement' (although there are other lower floors) sit the rolling stacks which contain quite a bit of archive material which has so far been catalogued and placed into archival boxes and filing systems and given reference numbers. 

These include lots of papers and documents, including the W G V Balchin papers, which were used to help create the centenary volume published in 1993. 

I was able to find a number of books and other documents which will be added in to some of the existing posts, and also go towards new posts. Some very exciting finds. Here's a catalogue of Norwegian slides, probably taken from images taken by James Fairgrieve.

1997: Solly Street

SOLLY STREET, SHEFFIELD: 1997 - present

In 1997, the GA moved to 160 Solly Street, a building with the office and warehouse space needed for the GA’s publishing activities. Initially the building was rented from a private landlord. In 2010 the GA purchased the property, confirming the GA’s commitment to Sheffield, and there was an event to mark this official opening.

At one stage there were plans to update the frontage of the building which were drawn up and I remember seeing. I wonder where they ended up...

The building doesn't have quite the same gravitas as some of other associations' HQ, but it serves its purpose well, and is fairly centrally located within the UK (as far as anywhere can be) and I always enjoy turning up there for the day.

This image was from the opening, taken by Bryan Ledgard and features Rex Walford talking to David Blunkett.

Image: Bryan Ledgard / Geographical Association

There used to be a cracking view up towards the Peak District.

2010: Solly Street - official opening

The GA has been based at Solly Street since 1997, when it moved into the premises and had an official opening by Wendy Morgan (GA President of the time)

In 2010, it purchased Solly Street, as this made financial sense compared with continuing to rent.

I was working for the GA during this time, and as staff we were all invited to the official opening on the 5th of November, where we were joined by many former GA Presidents.

By now, regular readers of the blog should be able to identify most of these people.

We were visited by David Blunkett, MP, Clive Betts MP and Meg Munn, MP, along with Alan Law, the Lord Mayor of Sheffield. Rita Gardner: the Director of the Royal Geographical Society was also in attendance.
The office space was cleared as people arrived from mid afternoon and had coffee and biscuits and took the chance to catch up with friends and colleagues. There was a formal presentation and speeches, followed by canapes and wine.

Plenty of names familiar from the spines of books in my office, or in piles in cupboards when I was teaching.

As always Bryan Ledgard took the official images of the opening. I managed to avoid being on any it seems. I was lurking by the door.

Image copyright: Bryan Ledgard / Geographical Association

Solly Street - 2009

Pictures of GA Staff at work in 2009 by Wendy North.

It's amazing what the small team at GA HQ can achieve. There have been changing numbers and roles over the years, and movement from volunteer to paid staff as well, but they always punch well above their weight, and thanks go from all Presidents to the team at Solly Street.

Top image:

Front to back: Nicola Donkin, Lucy Oxley, Anne Greaves

Bottom image, left to right: Dorcas Brown, Fran Royle, Ruth Totterdell, Ben Major.

Update

Ben moved on from the GA to do his Masters at the IoE, and then on to do a PhD

Benjamin Major is on the ESRC 1+3 scheme and has just started his PhD in Geography Education Research at the Institute of Education having already completed his MRes there this year. Ben has an interest in the topics of knowledge and curriculum, and particularly in looking at these from a social or critical realist perspective. 

Solly Street - 2007

The building between Solly Street and Edward Street were demolished in the summer of 2007. Re-building of flats has now taken place and the flats are largely occupied by students from Sheffield University.
View towards Netherthorpe. 

Picture: Wendy North

The move to Solly Street #3

I've been writing a few posts about the GA's move to Solly Street. Here's the third and final one.

The next person I consulted over the move to Solly Street was Ashley Kent, who was mentioned by Frances Soar as having been present in the car when the building was first spotted.

160 Solly Street has imposing steel doors, which were manufactured in the building itself as it was owned by a steel fabricator.

When you enter the building, there is also a stair case with steel bannisters.

I hadn't previously been aware of the reason why there so much steel around the place, although Sheffield is 'steel city' of course (and my dad was a steelworker for over 40 years).

Ashley gave me his memories of the move to Solly Street:

"My flawed - no doubt!? - memories were of driving round...with Frances I am sure at least, looking at premises in the Meadowhall area.

These were very much new retailing / warehousing / still industrial areas away from the city centre, and the GA staff were a little unhappy about that! 

Also we looked at rental premises at / next to the station but clearly inadequate re size / cost, but accessible for many! 

Solly Street felt like a rundown inner city area but with a big advantage of size and rent. Bizarrely it seems to have been a good decision!"

The premises next to the station were also mentioned by Peter Fox, who I also consulted about this move.

"The recollections are much as I remember them. The Fulwood Road site had its attractions - a nice old stone house with the ground floor used as the GA Library with oak shelves and members of staff housed in different 'bedrooms'. The search for a new home too is as I remember it. I was involved in the search - two properties we looked at were the old bus garage out towards Meadowhall and the refreshment rooms at Sheffield railway station. Very grand still with a huge long mahogany bar in a very good location but the storage space was very limited.
The fire of some of the book stock did mean we had a good clear-out of old stock but we were lucky to keep the Fluere Library books and a complete run of the journals which were not stored there. We got a very good deal on the building which the daughters of the previous owner wanted to get rid of at the time and we did not have too much work to do to get it into shape - it had been a specialist stainless steel factory. We had an official opening by Wendy Morgen - President at the time but most of the GA meetings were still held in London."

It turned out we had our beermeet in the premises that Peter and Ashley looked at the last time that the GA was held in Sheffield.

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license

Beermeet picture taken by Matt Podbury

The move to Solly Street #2

Carl Lee's request for information on the move to Solly Street led me next to Keith Grimwade.

Carl sent me this image showing planned accommodation in the Solly Street area for students. Circle proportional to number of bedrooms. The GA is being surrounded.

Keith Grimwade was President in 2006

Prior to that, he was involved in some of the decision making over the new home for the GA HQ after Fulwood Road was outgrown. 

He told me:

"I was Chair of the Education Standing Committee when it was being discussed at Governing Body. There were three main reasons for choosing the premises in Solly Street:
1. It was affordable
2. It was accessible
3. It had sufficient storage space for the growing range and stock of publications - this was a real bonus, Fulwood Road had become decidedly cramped.

The area was very run down and there were staff concerns about safety. The quiet corners of the building were home to the night time economy. Effort was put into lighting, signage and security and it wasn’t long before the building was left largely alone. There was a feeling that the area was on the cusp of being ‘on the up’ and it wasn’t just geographers joking when the talk turned to cycles of urban regeneration."

Explore the area on Street View here:

1998: The view from the Window

Thanks to Frances Soar, former Senior Administrator for the GA for sending me this piece from the Sheffield Telegraph in 1998 when the Geography through the Window project was launched as part of the Geography Action Week. 50 000 posters were printed apparently.

Frances told me in an earlier email:

Seeing the area further develop around Solly Street was fascinating. I have a vivid memory of standing with Rex Walford at one of Solly Street's first floor windows, leaning on the window sill and looking out at the landscape below with all the features that in a single view told the history and geography of our city - 'Geography Through the Window' came not long afterwards. Sadly, that wonderful view up the Don Valley (which also provided a helpful weather forecast and bird's eye view of traffic levels as we planned our evening journeys home), was eventually blocked by all those smart new blocks of student flats.

It's a lovely piece as it also makes clear Frances' own strong connections with Sheffield: the long-term home of the GA.

Does anyone still have one of the original posters? I hope to be able to find one in the archive when I finally get a chance to visit it in person again...