Moving to Sheffield

Advanced manufacturing & materials

The University of Sheffield AMRC, Boeing Sheffield, Rolls-Royce, Nikken, the Advanced Manufacturing Park at Catcliffe

The Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre started in 2001 as a partnership between the university and Boeing, and grew into the campus that persuaded Boeing to build its first European production facility in Sheffield. It is the reason engineering research here is unusually close to a shop floor rather than to a paper.

Steel & speciality metals

Sheffield Forgemasters, Outokumpu, Liberty Speciality Steels sites at Stocksbridge and Rotherham, Firth Rixson

Stainless steel was invented here by Harry Brearley in 1913 and crucible steel by Benjamin Huntsman in the 1740s. What survives is not volume steelmaking but very large forgings and specialist alloys — Forgemasters was taken into public ownership by the Ministry of Defence in 2021 because its presses are strategically irreplaceable.

Health & the teaching hospitals

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Sheffield Children's, the Royal Hallamshire, Weston Park Cancer Centre

One of the largest acute trusts in England, with a children's hospital and a dedicated cancer hospital that both take referrals from well beyond South Yorkshire. Between the trust and the two universities, health is a larger share of graduate employment here than manufacturing.

Universities & research

University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, the AMRC Training Centre, the Royal Armouries' national collection store

Two very large universities with about 60,000 students between them, sitting on either side of the city centre. Hallam is one of the biggest in the UK by headcount and heavily applied; Sheffield is a Russell Group research university whose engineering faculty anchors the manufacturing cluster.

Games, digital & edtech

Sumo Digital, Twinkl, The Chinese Room, Sheffield Digital, Ansys-adjacent simulation firms around the AMRC

Sumo Digital has been making games in Sheffield since 2003 and is now one of the largest independent studios in Europe; Twinkl grew from a Sheffield kitchen table into one of the biggest education-resource platforms in the world. The sector is small, well-connected and hires largely by word of mouth.

Government back-office & law

Home Office at Vulcan House, Department for Education, HMRC, Irwin Mitchell, Sheffield City Council

Several thousand civil service jobs sit in the city centre — the Home Office's Sheffield estate handles a substantial share of UK visa and asylum casework, which is an odd thing to live next to as a migrant and worth knowing. Irwin Mitchell was founded here in 1912 and still has its head office in the city.

Nightlife · North-west of the centre, on a man-made island in the Don

A wedge of former works and foundries between the river and a twelfth-century millrace, now the densest run of breweries, taprooms and small restaurants in the city, with an industrial museum in the middle of it.

Local tip: The museum runs the River Don Engine, the most powerful working steam engine in Europe, on scheduled firings — check the day before you go, because the difference between seeing it turn and seeing it stand still is the whole visit. The Fat Cat and the Kelham Island Tavern have both been running since long before the area was fashionable.

Nature · Inside the city boundary, west of Hallam

Four miles of gritstone edge above the Hope Valley, the birthplace of British rock climbing, reachable on a city bus and technically still Sheffield.

Local tip: The 271 and 272 run to Castleton and the 65 towards Bakewell, so you do not need a car to get on the moors — but the last bus back is early and the timetable thins sharply on Sundays. Check it before you set off rather than at the top of Higger Tor in the dark.

Culture · City centre, between the Peace Gardens and Arundel Gate

One of the largest temperate glasshouses of any UK city, free, open to the street and used as a shortcut, with the Millennium Gallery and the Ruskin Collection attached to it.

Local tip: The Ruskin Collection exists because John Ruskin founded a museum for Sheffield's working metalworkers in 1875, on the theory that people who make things should be able to look at beautiful ones. It is free, it is small, and almost nobody walking through the glasshouse next door realises it is there.

Food · Two miles south-west of the centre

The city's best independent food street and the road behind it — greengrocers, fishmongers, delis and small kitchens, with a monthly street market that closes the road.

Local tip: Sharrow Vale Road is the one locals shop on; Ecclesall Road is the one they drink on. Come on a market Sunday and walk up to Endcliffe Park afterwards — the Porter Brook path runs from there all the way out to the moors, which is the single best thing about living in this part of the city.

Nightlife · West of the centre, around Devonshire Green and Division Street

Record shops, tattooists, independent bars and the venues — The Leadmill a few streets away, Network and the O2 Academy nearby — that made Sheffield's music reputation.

Local tip: The Leadmill has been fighting an eviction dispute with its landlord since 2022 and the position changes; check it is still trading before you plan a night around it. Sheffield's music history is not just Pulp and the Arctic Monkeys — the Human League, Heaven 17, ABC and Warp Records all came out of a few streets here.

Culture · Sharrow, between Ecclesall Road and Sharrow Vale

An 1836 nonconformist burial ground built into a steep wooded valley, with an Egyptian-revival gateway, a Greek-revival chapel and 87,000 burials under the trees.

Local tip: It is a public park now, run largely by volunteers, and it is the strangest quiet place in Sheffield — half arboretum, half Victorian death architecture. Go in on the Cemetery Avenue side and walk uphill; most people who live two streets away have never been in.