Concrete ranges banded in brick climb the hillside in stepped terraces, linked by wide open access decks.
What Park Hill looks like
Four linked ranges of concrete flats climb the hillside between and , east of , stepping from four storeys at the bottom to thirteen at the top. The frame is exposed concrete, infilled with brick in purple and terracotta bands, with light red and cream further along the blocks.
Every third floor carries a wide access deck that runs the length of a block, built wide enough for a milk float to pass along it. Bridges link deck to deck between the ranges, reaching the ground at open stairwells and lift towers.
, a park built between the railway station and the estate, separates Park Hill from the tracks below. Urban Splash's renovation has added glass balconies and coloured panels to some of the blocks, in yellow and orange, with red at a few corners. It has also rebuilt a run of ground floor units into shops and bars, and turned one range on Rhodes Street into a student block called . Other ranges still stand in raw grey concrete.
On one of the link bridges, a neon sign spells out I LOVE YOU WILL U MARRY ME, set into the railings above the deck. The estate was built between 1957 and 1961 and is listed Grade II*.
Shot in Park Hill
Park Hill's own concrete ranges and access decks have stood in for another city's estate on screen and been home to a fictional family inside one of its flats. Both productions used the place as built, exteriors and decks included.
'71 and Doctor Who
The same decks have played a Belfast estate under curfew and a family's own front door, with nothing dressed between the two. One is a single period drama set in 1971, the other a contemporary series that returns to the same flat across three episodes.
'71, 2014
Played the Divis Flats estate, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1971
For '71, the production shot Park Hill's own exteriors and access decks as the Divis Flats estate in Belfast, standing in for the city during the Troubles. The decks and the stepped concrete ranges were filmed exactly as they stand, with nothing built for the exteriors. Street View
Doctor Who
A Park Hill flat
Doctor Who used Flat 34 at Park Hill as the home of companion Yasmin Khan's family. The flat appears in three episodes, Arachnids in the UK, Demons of the Punjab and Spyfall Part One. The show plays Park Hill as itself, a Sheffield address rather than a stand in for anywhere else. Street View
Alexandra Road Estate in Camden is also concrete streets in the sky, with long stepped terraces built from 1972 to 1978 and listed Grade II* like Park Hill. Rowley Way, the deck that runs its full length, gives the same raised walkway and repeating window bays. The concrete at Alexandra Road is left bare and unpainted rather than infilled with brick, so a wide shot reads paler and flatter than Park Hill's coloured bands. Try searching concrete streets in the sky now.
Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar had the same long concrete access decks and stepped massing. The estate is gone now, its first block demolished in 2017 and the second in 2025, so Park Hill is the closest standing match for that exact look. Robin Hood Gardens faced its decks onto a central grass mound rather than a hillside, so a wide establishing shot needs flatter ground than Park Hill has. Try searching long concrete access decks now.
The Byker Wall is the other big deck access estate from the same years, a single curving block of maisonettes reached by long projecting galleries. It is brick rather than concrete, in warm brown and buff brick with timber gallery fronts, so it photographs warmer and more textured than Park Hill. Keep the galleries and the curve in frame and the brick will carry the comparison, but a wide shot of the whole wall gives away the different material straight away. Try searching deck access estate now.
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