A chilly winter’s night in Sheffield, the fourth largest city in England and the hidden metropolis of the county of South Yorkshire. Tucked between seven hills, just out of sight of the M1 motorway and between the two principal north-south main line railways of Great Britain, it’s no wonder that the city is often overlooked by native Brits.
Sheffield was a city built on the steel industry, an industry which collapsed and re-developed, and which now churns out more steel than at any point in the history of the city. But preconceptions about the city stuck, and Sheffield has now evolved into a quietly proud modern city, with two university’s and a healthy economy of service based industries. The mass employers are no longer the steel mills, but the technology and customer service companies that have sprung up around the edges of the compact city centre. The well educated graduate workforce seems to prefer to stay in the city after finishing their higher level studies, and with house prices on the up, Sheffield is managing to temper the senseless loft apartment boom of Leeds or Manchester with a lively music scene and cultural landscape that has no difficulty in being proudly different.
The centre of Sheffield can easily be criticised for the lack of interesting historical neighbourhoods. But looking closer it can more rewarding to unpick and unpeel the overlapping layers of successive masterplans: redevelopments that were planned to revitalise the city for a generation that was yet to be born. Around the fabulously cheap shopping precint of the Moor, such stained and rusting fifties architectural treats at this Grosevnor House Hotel hark bark to a rapidly disappearing era of tectonic concrete blocks and inhospitable underpasses: a miniature and more loveable recreation of Birmingham’s dreadful (and now demolished) sixties Bullring. Just a few hundred metres away, the next ‘new’ Sheffield is being finished and pushed into the public domain. The established city centre Peace Gardens have now been extended with new commercial developments on the site of the old City Council buildings. Perched incromprehensibly and insensitively between the Peace Gardens and the attractive glazed glu-lam hall of the indoor Winter Gardens is Sheffield’s latest white elephant: the Macdonald St. Paul’s Hotel. This four star hotel seems to have been built the wrong way round, with its reception area facing the Peace Gardens. A nice civic gesture, you might think, but a nightmare for those arriving by car or taxi: an automated bollard blocks the only road that accesses this entrance, and the appearance of the inelegant flat facade of the building does the city centre no favours at all.
So on just such a cold winter’s night, it’s reassuring to find that the ‘old’ Sheffield is still here, in the constantly changing, constantly ‘regenerated’ city centre. On Norfolk Street, a stone’s throw from the Macdonald St. Paul and less than ten minutes walk from the railway station is the Brown Bear. This two room pub has managed to hold out, not only from sweeping redevelopment of it’s higgledy-piggledy block, but also from comprehensive takeover by monopolistic chain pubs. The decor on both sides of the pub (divided by the single island bar) reminds you immediately of your location: dozens of old theatre and pantomime posters have been collaged to paper the walls, and that’s only appropriate considering the large number of theatre-goers who come for a pre- or post-theatre drink. But stay a little longer, and you’ll find a much more varied clientelle. The variety of accents will remind you of Sheffield’s different neighbourhoods and the occasional clump of students will have you checking your change the first time you order at the bar. Associated solely with the Tadcaster Brewery, the pub only sells drinks produced or marketed by that brewery. And while you might bemoan the absence of your favourite homogenous international lager, you should at least try Tadcaster’s finest. At the time of writing, a pint of Sovereign Bitter was just £1.31. I was able to get the first round in using the small change I’d been collecting in various trouser pockets at home. Until I hear otherwise, the Brown Bear retains my recommendation as both Sheffield’s cheapest and most honest city centre pub.
