Sheffield School of Art

History and Development

1843 Sheffield School of Design founded on Glossop Road.
1855 Soon it expanded into temporary space on Arundel Street, followed shortly afterwards by the construction of a purpose-built School of Art, in Arundel Street.

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, The School of Art continued to expand with extensions and alterations to the Arundel Street building including a basement pottery, two purpose-built workshops for carpentry and silversmithing.

1940, December: the Art School is hit by an incendiary-bomb during the Sheffield Blitz, much of the building damaged though some articles were salvaged, including a number of valuable books. During the remaining war years, students were housed in temporary accommodation in Norfolk Street using rooms in an old furniture warehouse.
1945 With the reconstruction of the City centre after the War, there was a need to find new premises and the senior school moved into the old Bluecoat School, Brincliffe, Psalter Lane requisitioned by the army in 1939.

The accomodation in Arundel Street, opposite the old School of Medicine at the end of Surrey Street, became The Junior Art Department (JAD) offering 11-year-old pupils a grammar-school education. The curriculum comprised English language, French, mathematics, geography, and history, with painting and crafts high on the agenda. For two hours a day (four hours a day in the fourth year) pupils had painting and drawing. There was pottery, woodworking, and silversmithing in the workshops adjacent to the burnt-out Art School, painting and decorating was carried-out in rooms in Norfolk St.

Pupils wore a green school uniform with a brightly embroidered oval badge on the pocket depicting a phśnix rising from the flames.

Brincliffe College of Art, Psalter Lane.

At the end of the fourth year, JAD students matriclated up to Brincliffe, Psalter Lane where they were taught anatomy, life-drawing, and architecture.

Facilities at the college included type-setting, stone lithography, and an ancient printing-press.

2005 Sheffield Hallam University (SHU), awarding its own degrees. It was reorganised into four large faculties and Brincliffe College became the Psalter Lane campus (ACES) - Faculty of Arts, Computing, Engineering and Sciences, incorporating Art & Design. (The art school no longer existed as a separate facility.
2008 Psalter Lane campus closed and moved.