Sheffield Pub News - May 2006

The Yorkshire Grey, previously on Charles Street in the city centre has finally been demolished to make way for the development of St Paul's Place. A new development of 250 luxury apartments, offices, cafe-bars, restaurants, a 500-space multi-storey car park and two new public squares, St Paul's Place is the commercial element of the £130m Heart of the City project.

Members of the Sheffield & District branch of the Campaign for Real Ale have voted for the Sheaf View at Heeley as the winner of the May Pub of the Month award. These awards highlight pubs in the area that serve good beer in a comfortable and friendly atmosphere. The presentation will take place in the pub on the evening of Tuesday 9th May, from 8pm.

About the Sheaf View: The Sheaf View at the London Road end of Gleadless Road was a small 19th Century corner pub, closed by John Smiths in the seventies. Re-opened after refurbishment as a free house a few years later, it was bought by Marstons in about 1985, who ran it with varying degrees of success until it closed again in 1997.

After three years of increasing dereliction, James Birkett, then owner of the New Barrack Tavern, saw an opportunity for bringing a wider range of real ale to the Heeley area. After extensive refurbishment lasting 6-7 months, the Sheaf View opened on 24 May 2000. The bar displays an impressive array of 8 handpumps, serving Kelham Island Easy Rider, Tom Woods Shepherd's Delight, and Wentworth WPA, together with five ever-changing guest beers, always including a mild, porter or stout. The Sheaf also stocks up to 10 draught continental beers, including Budweiser Budvar and their newly introduced Dark Lager (Czech Republic), Früli Belgian White, Leffe Blonde and St Louis Kriek (Belgium), and Erdinger Weissbrau (Germany) as well as a good selection of bottled continental ales. There is also a pump for a regularly changing traditional cider.

The pub is entered from the corner and then by negotiating a narrow walkway with seating on either side, before reaching the spacious main L-shaped bar area. This can also be directly accessed from the rear door from the car park. A recent extension behind the bar provides the current no smoking room. Flooring and furnishings are predominately wood, and the walls are decorated with brewery bric a brac.

Outside there is an extensive beer garden, and the pub also has full disabled facilities. There are no fruit machines, television or jukebox, and the hum of conversation usually drowns out the quiet background music.

Wednesday nights there is a popular quiz. The Sheaf is open all day from 12 noon.

Choice, reasonable prices and friendly, helpful staff have made the pub consistently popular since opening and it has quickly become the flagship real ale pub in the south of the city.

Congratulations to James and his team of enthusiastic staff headed by Andy, Nicky and Dom, on gaining the Pub of the Month award for May 2006. Join us for the presentation on Tuesday 9th May More information: Dave Williams, Sheffield branch chairman : chairman@sheffieldcamra.co.uk or 07851998745

We have started to compile a list of completely no-smoking pubs in Sheffield ahead of the blanket ban on smoking in pubs that is to be introduced in summer 2007. We only have details of a few no-smoking pubs at the moment so please contact us so that we can add more to the list.

Mild is one of the most traditional beer styles, which is enjoying a revival in today's real ale market. Usually dark brown in colour, due to the use of well-roasted malts or barley it is less hopped than bitters and often has a chocolatety character with nutty and burnt flavours. CAMRA will be promoting mild throughout May and celebrating National Mild Day on Saturday 6th May 2006. We are asking licensees to come on board by stocking this style of beer, encouraging pub-goers to try a few milds throughout the month and hope that all of our members will participate in mild events up and down the country to make this year's Mild Month the biggest ever. Here in Sheffield we will be marking National Mild Day by running a pub crawl across Sheffield, visiting pubs which will be serving mild. Anyone can join the crawl, and be introduced to this beer style and the pubs that serve it. The meeting point is the Devonshire Cat at midday, and the pubs we will be visiting to sample the mild ales on offer include the Old Queens Head (Pond Street), Corner Pin (Carlisle Street East), Carlton (Attercliffe Road), White Lion (Chesterfield Road), New Barrack Tavern (Penistone Road), Fat Cat (Alma Street), Kelham Island Tavern (Russell Street) and the Cask & Cutler (Shalesmoor). Drinkers joining in the Mild Crawl will also be able to obtain an entry form for the national 'Wild about Mild' competition - they simply have to name which of the milds sampled they enjoyed the most, and could win the chance to be a judge on the beer tasting panel for the Champion Beer of Britain competition, held at the Great British Beer Festival at Earls Court in London this summer. MORE INFORMATION: Dave Williams, Sheffield branch chairman : chairman@sheffieldcamra.co.uk or 07851998745

The Deep End bar in Hillsborough is now boarded up. If anyone has further information about the fate of this pub please let us know.