Hollis Croft: A Matter of Time

Sheffield, mid-19 century, the peak of the steel industry that both built and scarred the city. Dark streets and darker attitudes smother life in the grimy tenements and back streets. A young woman, Neive, leaves the poverty of her parents’ home in West Ireland to seek work in the industrial cities of Northern England. She finds herself in Sheffield, having to hide her femininity to get work in steel cementation factories, she also must hide her forbidden love. An unlikely salvation occurs to her in the shape of a famous circus impresario…but will her plan lead her to a new life? This fictional story winds around the archaeological remains from an industrial site in Sheffield. Archaeologist Milica (Mili) Rajic imagines a human story entwined within the archaeological remnants and artefacts uncovered in the heavily industrialised Victorian Sheffield.