The Husband family, lived at 22 Elmore Rd 1911 – 1962

This house was the home of two of Britain’s best known civil engineers, Joseph Husband and his son, Sir Charles Husband. Joseph Husband bought the house in 1911 when he was 40 years old. He had been born in Sheffield and had studied engineering in Dublin, returning to Sheffield in 1892 to inaugurate a new civil engineering department at the Sheffield Technical School. This was later to become the Civil Engineering Department of Sheffield University, where Professor Husband held the first Chair in Civil Engineering, retiring from academic life in 1936. However well before that, in 1921, he had formed his own engineering company Husband and co. He was very well known in both academic and industrial circles as an expert in bridge building and structural engineering. He left one highly visible enduring mark on Sheffield in the form of the large steel mast on the war memorial in Barker’s Pool, which his company designed, manufactured and erected. He died aged 90 in 1961. Charles Husband was only 3 years old when his parents bought this house. He was educated at King Teds school then at Sheffield University, and in 1930 he joined his father’s firm, working on housing schemes, road and railway bridges, drainage and water engineering. After WW2 Charles rose to fame in the engineering world with some spectacular projects. his best-known being the design and construction of the Jodrell Bank radio telescope. Its huge satellite dish, 250ft across, is the biggest fully steerable satellite dish in the world and is still in use today. Following this success Charles Husband went on to work on many other projects, for example he built the post office satellite station at Goonhilly Downs on The Lizard in Cornwall. One of his projects that failed to survive to the present day was the full-size wooden replica of ‘The Bridge over the River Kwai’, which he made for the film of that name, and which was spectacularly blown up. He was awarded a knighthood in 1965 and became known as ‘the space-age knight’ before his death in 1984.