'The town hall belongs to the people - we need to show them it'

Proudly watching over the city for 125 years, Sheffield Town Hall is a symbol of a proud civic past - yet many people have seen little of the Victorian building's interior.

Despite hosting thousands of meetings and functions such as weddings, parts of the Grade I-listed hall have been seen by few members of the public.

For the past 18 months, the city council's heritage champion, Janet Ridler, has been leading behind the scenes tours of an edifice that has welcomed Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill through its doors.

But Janet, a serving councillor, has her limits - as a vertigo sufferer, she cannot pass through the "mystery" door to the highest parts of the town hall.

Her tours give visitors a chance to admire the original desks in the Victorian chambers, elegant mosaic floors and ornate ceilings.

The council has recently voted to approve a £450m renovation project that will open up more areas of the 1890s building for the public to see.

"A lot of people only ever come to the town hall for business matters or registrations at the registry office, and apart from a tantalising glimpse of the grand entrance hall which is pretty impressive, they don't really go much further," says Janet.

"I think as it is a civic building that belongs to the people of Sheffield we need to change that."

Behind the mystery door in the banqueting kitchen is a room leading to the base of the clock tower. Climbing up the 38 steep steps to reach the original four-sided tower is not for the faint-hearted. It was originally built to house a bell.

"I think the hope was that somebody would come forward and pay the £400 that it would have cost to have it made and fitted back in the late 19th Century, but it never happened," says Janet.

Although chimes can be heard every hour, they are actually electronic and weren't fitted until 2002.

A tiny balcony alongside the clock mechanisms offers spectacular views of the city and the Christmas market below.

Down the stairs from the old porters' lodge - now a staff entrance - is the basement, a corridor that has a whiff of dank and mould in the air.

"The city treasury would have been in the Town Hall years ago so this is where the money would have been kept," explains Janet.

At the end of a tiled corridor is a secure door to the storage room where legal deeds relating to property and land in Sheffield are kept.

It is filled from floor to ceiling with cabinets of files. There are only paper copies of the documents in existence, but the council wants to reduce the amount of the building that is used for storage - currently 10%.

The final stop on the tour is a "time capsule" - a ladies' lavatory block that has been untouched since its closure in 2013.

The gentlemen's conveniences have been converted into a cocktail bar, but the ladies', facing the Peace Gardens, have been left exactly how they were.

The basement toilets are accessed via moss-covered stone steps behind a street food truck, and the payment machine with its 20p fee is still on the wall outside.

There are still nappies in the vending machine, a kettle in the attendant's room and a 2012 Olympics souvenir edition of Hello magazine.

It is hoped that the redevelopment of this fascinating jewel in Sheffield's crown will make it as popular a stop on the tourist trail as Kelham Island, the Crucible Theatre and the Peak District.

For now, those on the tour will sense the ghosts of the city's past walking beside them - from the steel barons to the Sheffield Pals, who enrolled in the council chamber to serve in World War One.

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