Sheffield's Blitz memorial walk launches at bombed sites

Atkinsons department store was destroyed in the Luftwaffe Blitz on 12 December 1940

A heritage trail has been set up to take people on a tour of Sheffield's most heavily bombed areas during the blitz in 1940.

The Sheffield Blitz Heritage Trail was created with Heritage Lottery funding to link 12 different sites in the city.

Hundreds died during German Luftwaffe raids on Sheffield between 12 and 15 December, 1940.

The site of Atkinson's department store on The Moor, razed to the ground at the time, is the gateway to trail.

Bramall Lane football ground was hit by Luftwaffe bombs during the Sheffield Blitz

Other sites include Sheffield City Hall, Devonshire Green, the Central Library and Bramall Lane football ground.

Historian Neil Anderson has also written a book, Countdown to the Sheffield Blitz, about the impact on the city.

Sheffield Blitz Trail sites

• Sheffield City Hall is still scarred by shrapnel on its outside pillars

• Atkinsons department store was razed to the ground and the rest of The Moor shopping area was virtually flattened

• Around 70 people died when The Marples Hotel on Fitzalan Square was hit on 12 December 1940. Some bodies are thought to still be buried beneath

• Devonshire Green: Mr Anderson said: "People know Devonshire Green as a park nowadays, but in 1940 it was a thriving area of back-to-back housing, totally devastated by the Blitz."

• Sheffield Central Library on Surrey Street, still bears a huge crack in the entrance way from when the nearby Marples Hotel was hit. It was the hub of the relief effort, where people went if they had lost loved ones or their homes

Source: Neil Anderson, Sheffield Blitz Heritage Trail

Mr Anderson said family memoirs inspired him to commemorate the Blitz.

"My grandma talked about Sheffield during the war and in the Blitz. It piqued my imagination and I realised how little there is to mark the sacrifices here," he said.

Devonshire Green, now a city centre park, was "a thriving back-to-back housing area" until it was bombed in 1940

The app means the trail can be a "legacy" for all ages, Mr Anderson said.

The King and Queen visited Sheffield bombsites, after more than 2,000 people were killed and wounded and 40,000 were made homeless in the bombings

Bodies are still thought to be buried beneath the site of the Marples Hotel on Fitzalan Square

An 80-year old teddy bear, the last item to be sold before the store was destroyed, was taken back to Atkinsons for the trail launch.

Mr Teddy Dodgson, was a Christmas present for Brenda Spencer whose father rushed into Atkinsons just before it closed.

Bomb damage at Walker and Hall near Sheffield Central Library

A permanent exhibition was opened at the National Emergency Services Museum in Sheffield in 2017 to commemorate the devastation to the city