Burngreave (ward)

Burngreave ward—which includes the districts of Burngreave, Fir Vale, Grimesthorpe, Pitsmoor, and Shirecliffe—is one of the 28 electoral wards in Sheffield, England. It is located in the northern part of the city and covers an area of 2.8 square miles (7.3 km2; 1,800 acres). The population of this ward in 2011 was 27,481 people in 9,906 households. It is one of the wards that make up the Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough constituency. Most of the ward is served by a free community newspaper, the Burngreave Messenger.

Burngreave Community Radio

Burngreave Community Radio, also known as BCR103.1FM or simply BCR is a community radio station based in Burngreave, Sheffield, England. The pre-decessor of BCR was Pure Community Music (PCM) broadcast around March–April 2001 on medium wave (1413AM kHz, through a Restricted Service Licence (RSL) broadcast. BCR is Sheffield's newest major radio station, and can be accessed in the local area on 103.1FM or by streaming over the web. BCR plays a wide range of music, and also hosts news, sports, Breakfast shows, talkshows and religious programmes, and has shows in English, Arabic, Urdu and Kurdish. BCR has over 80 presenters, and 440 members and volunteers who help run the station. BCR is also active in the local community, going to events, advertising local shops and businesses, and working in close partnership with schools and charities. Burngreave Community Radio Limited was incorporated on 21 September 2007 and dissolved on 11 January 2011. Burngreave Community Radio (BCR) stopped broadcasting on 103.1FM in September 2011.

East House mass shooting

On New Year's Day 1960, three men were shot and killed and two wounded in a mass shooting at the East House public house in Sheffield, England. The killer was Mohamed Ismail, a Somali from the colony of British Somaliland. Ismail had earlier expressed a desire to end his life but thought that suicide was not an option due to his religious beliefs. He committed the shooting in the hope that he would be arrested and sentenced to death by a British court. Ismail barricaded himself into the pub's toilet and was arrested there by two unarmed police constables, Gilbert Robertson and Denis Hastings. After being remanded in custody, he was determined to be insane and detained at Broadmoor Hospital for 22 months. Ismail was deported to Somalia after his release, and there he went on to shoot a judge before being killed following another mass shooting in which he killed several people. Robertson and Hastings received no formal recognition in their lifetimes for tackling the gun-wielding killer armed only with their truncheons, but in 2023, their families received bravery awards on their behalf from the South Yorkshire Police Federation.

Sheffield Wicker railway station

Wicker railway station (later Wicker Goods railway station) was the first railway station to be built in Sheffield, England. It was to the north of the city centre, at the northern end of the Wicker, in the fork formed by Spital Hill and Savile Street. It was opened on 31 October 1838 as the southern terminus of the Sheffield and Rotherham Railway, which ran north to Rotherham Westgate railway station. In 1840, the line was connected to the North Midland Railway at Rotherham Masborough railway station. Carriages from Sheffield would be attached to North Midland trains for onward travel. A southbound curve was added in 1869. On 1 January 1847, a half-mile connecting line from the Wicker to the Bridgehouses station of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway had been constructed in order to increase goods traffic and enable wagon transfers. This short steeply graded line, enclosed within a tunnel for almost its entire length was known locally as the Fiery Jack. Wicker was replaced as a passenger station by Sheffield Midland Station on 1 February 1870 when the Midland Railway opened a new direct route from Chesterfield to just north of Wicker, now part of the Midland Main Line. Railway workers refer to this route as the "New Road", as opposed to the "Old Road" of the original North Midland line. It has gradients of 1 in 100, a viaduct and three tunnels, including Bradway Tunnel, 2,027 yards (1,853 m) long. Wicker remained open as a goods station until 1965 and has now been demolished. The site is currently occupied by a Tesco Extra supermarket, having previously contained car dealerships and was, until 2006 when the Spital Hill / Savile Street corner was remodelled as part of the Sheffield Northern Relief Road, the home of Amanda King's Made In Sheffield sculpture, now removed.

Burngreave

Burngreave is an inner city district of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England lying north of the city centre. The population of the ward taken at the 2011 census was 27,481. It started to develop in the second half of the 19th century. Prior to this, this area was mostly covered by Burnt Greave wood. Most of the area of the wood is covered by Burngreave Cemetery which was built in 1860 (consecrated 1861) and extended in the early 1900s. Grimesthorpe Lane, which runs through Burngreave, is a very old road that follows the course of the Roman Rig, a man-made defensive ridge—probably built by the Celtic Brigantes tribe—that used to run from near the Wicker to Mexborough.