The disaster that shook Sheffield
On the afternoon of Saturday, April 15th 1989, Britain's worst ever sporting disaster unfolded at the Hillsborough football stadium in northern Sheffield - the home of Sheffield Wednesday. A city, famed for its illustrious history of steel-making, would instantly become synonymous with tragedy - casting a dark shadow across South Yorkshire.
Overnight, Hillsborough was turned into a shrine. Flowers, scarves and tributes were pinned to the blue gates of a stadium considered to be one of England's best and most prestigious.
Football supporters from across the country came to Hillsborough to pay tribute, many of them from Sheffield itself.
Fourteen-year-old Patrick Sissons was one of them: "Sheffield as a city felt the loss of the Liverpool fans. It felt the disaster on a large scale. That was shown by the amount of people who did come to put scarves on the gates of Leppings Lane. For days and days afterwards, Hillsborough was a sea of blue and white and other colours as well. It's something we hadn't seen before and it's something we hopefully will never see again."
Back in 1989, Patrick had a small tape recorder on him as he paid his tribute at Hillsborough. Twenty years ago, he taped his thoughts as he stood outside the ground, surrounded by the flowers, scarves and football memorabilia. Twenty years on, he has returned to the ground to give his memories.
"You're used to seeing seas of blue and white when you watch Wednesday. But this was different; it was so intense. So many people had been to lay their scarves. Normally, football supporters hang onto their scarves until the day they die. That in itself shows just how much it affected people. It was an outpouring of grief," he said.
Clive Betts was also a Sheffield man stunned by the disaster. He was the leader of the city council at the time and was actually at the game when the tragedy unfolded.
He said: "The city felt some sort of collective blame or at least responsibility. Those of us who were Wednesday fans, those of us who had been here, realised it was our ground. The whole city felt it somehow - it had happened in Sheffield; it was on the international news. We were a city where it happened, the club where it happened."
"At the club, there was just the spontaneous bringing of flowers and football shirts and memorabilia. It was absolutely incredible; some of the messages from people - some of them from children, others from families who had lost loved ones. It was just the totality of the outpouring of people's feelings."
Jenny Brough ran the Magnet Hotel at Southey Green in the city where supporters from both Liverpool and Nottingham Forest had been enjoying a quick pint before the match. Hours later, many were back, sitting in stunned silence after the horrors they had witnessed.
Jenny remembers how the disaster affected Sheffield and the tributes paid at Hillsborough: "It started with scarves being hung and teddy bears left, then there were notes, verses and flowers. That night there were a few flowers, the next day it was about two foot forward and the next it was four foot forward until you finished up 12 feet away. It was just unbelievable. It was almost too much to take in. I've never seen so many daffodils - it was Easter time - and I remember it being just an array of yellow."
