INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH
THERE'S FAR MORE TO SHEFFIELD THAN KNIVES AND FORKS, A COUPLE OF FAMOUS FOOTBALL TEAMS AND 'THE FULL MONTY'. AWARD-WINNING INDUSTRIAL MUSEUMS MAKE IT A FINE PLACE TO TAKE THE KIDS - AND YOU COULD BE JUST AS ENTHRALLED!
Words by Kieron D Fennelly
Pictures by Richard Parsons
It's one of those domestic hiccups that every parent will recognise: you've double-booked yourself. After endless postponements, our daughter had promised faithfully to take the younger two on a real outing this weekend. Trouble is, she had also promised her eldest that she would deliver her voluminous belongings to her at university on the same weekend. How to combine the two? It's at this point that the phone call comes and you quietly congratulate yourself for choosing a Meriva. Vauxhall's intelligently compact MPV is comfortably able to swallow grandparents, grandchildren and all the weekend bags.
Sorted, as they say. Now you just need a suitable destination to get them excited. Sheffield looks promising and there's the Peak District as well.
So Sheffield it is, and as daughter goes off on the university delivery run, we take over the grandchildren's outing. It's roughly an hour's motorway cruise, and in the Meriva, driver and passengers sit high, so the view from the front is commanding; and there are no complaints from the back seats either - thanks to the Twin Audio system. So in what seems like no time, we're turning into the Magna Centre between Sheffield and Rotherham. On the site of the former Templeborough steelworks, the Centre is housed in the old melting shop and comprises a series of highly interactive presentations, which recount the history and process of steel-making.
Each of the museum's pavilions has a theme: air, fire, wind, water and earth. Meaning you'll get wet, hot, dazzled and deafened in the best theme park traditions, but above all you'll be impressed by the phenomenal power of the forces harnessed here. This is no mere fantasy, though, but a graphic demonstration of how steel really was manufactured. And the sheer drama of its sights and sounds, combined with numerous opportunities to participate in the process, give youngsters an authentic feel not just for steel-making, but the physical hardship of working in such an environment and how it affected lives.
Framed by the massive structures around it, the Meriva looks stylish and modern against a backdrop of rusting iron girders and cranes - yet, as the children learn, it was from places like this that the stainless steel and plate that were the envy of the world would come.
The Industrial Revolution began in Britain and appropriately, we have created living museums which lead the world in commemorating that momentous period.