ABBEYDALE ROAD

Another shopping expedition to Meersbrook, another Click-and-Collect at Homebase, another mysterious “drill bit” added to Mrs RM’s burgeoning collection. She’s going to chop me up and bury me in the little wood shed in the garden, you know.

Homebase had my packages ready; Mrs RM has reached “favoured customer” status already.

On the return I stopped in ANOTHER retail park on the A61 to explore. The pashmina’s queue for Create Coffee stretched back from Heeley to Dronfield, so I headed west under the train line towards Abbeydale Road, where the headwear is more traditional.

Away from the falafel, cupcakes and model railway shops of Hackney-lite Heeley, Nether Edge offers more traditional pubbing.

Well, I shall have to go to all the Sheffield Hungry Horses to compare the IPA, I suppose.

Will wrote “Interestingly, this one has six hand pumps on the bar, with Greene King IPA, Abbot Ale and Old Speckled Hen, Timothy Taylor Landlord, Abbeydale Moonshine and a “guest”: GK Grubber, a Six Nations-themed beer.”  but only scored it 5/10. I guess it’s marked down for the rugby-themed beer.

Abbeydale Road is bustling with social distancing, if that’s not a contradiction. Everyone wears face masks outside in Sheffield, and would rather throw themselves in front of an oncoming tram than come with 2 metres of you on the pavement.

I stand in the road to take a pic of the Broadfield. It’s my job, and I can’t do it at home, can I ?

I can tell a pub from the tiling. The blue tiling tells me the Broadfield is aimed at the Sunday Lunch family market, offering a pie menu, gin and Abbeydale Moonshine. Even NINE beers can’t get you in the GBG in Sheffield, though; they should move to Mansfield. I thought it looked a rowdier nephew of The York, and the reliable Will Larter confirms it is/was.

Mind, it had TEN beers on when Will went. See how far Sheffield has fallen in offering choice.

A-ha ! It’s my ghost sign fix. Not as good as the Ind Coope one down the road, but it’ll do.

Then a lady with a sausage dog shuffles towards me. And waits. No idea why, so I wait too. Eventually I get bored and climb a hill.

I thought she was going to follow me up, but the sausage dog couldn’t be bothered, so I had the view to myself.

To you it’s a mound, to a Cambridge boy it’s a mountain.

Find out later if I got down safely.

Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

22 thoughts on “ABBEYDALE ROAD”

  1. Yes, that blue tiling on the Broadfield isn’t very old so probably is aimed at the Sunday Lunch family market,

    BOOKBINDER would be from the mid 1970s when Good Beer Guides fell apart before the next edition was published.

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  2. Having been looking at the picture of the Broadfield I think that the tiling is very slightly asymetrical, i.e. the central window is offset a small amount to the right. My guess is that might have been the main entrance years ago but the pub was extended to the left and a new entrance put in along with the tiling. However, where would the public bar have been – possibly entered from the rear of the building? It also looks like the pub has been extended into another building on the right – which looks a bit like a former bank. I’m also intrigued by whether the building at he back with the chimney pot is also part of the pub – the latter must surely have had a chimney somewhere at some point.

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    1. I think some of us have too much time on our hands. What a shame the pubs won’t be opening again till cases drop below 1,000 a day and are about to increase from their plateau as we re-open schools.

      (sorry-rant)

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    2. Ian,
      Old photos show the pub as originally not much wider than around the two bay windows with the front door between them, and then an extension built to the right, the pub’s left.

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      1. Here’s a link to an old photo, as mentioned by Paul: https://www.thisissheffield.app/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/The-Broadfield.jpg

        The extension must be old enough that it was in the days when there was a public and a saloon, as the entrance has two further internal doors, one of which is now superfluous. Before the change to the internal layout mentioned in my review of nine years ago, I was last there on a pub crawl in about 2004, so my recall of the older version is necessarily hazy. All I can say with certainty is that it was nothing like what it is now.

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      2. SH,
        Isn’t that ‘TAP’ and an arrow on the side wall directing the fiff raff towards a Tap Room door near the rear, the front door presumably being for the ‘better’ room(s) ?

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  3. I love that sign above the entrance where “Tennants Celebrated Ales” is worked permanently into the side of the building; now there’s confidence in the product you’re serving!

    Must say I’m impressed that any model railway shop is surviving in 2021. I remember them from my youth but gosh it’s been a long time since I saw one anywhere in America.

    So is Hungry Horse the name of the pubco, and The Hardy Pick is the name of the pub that joined their stable of pubs? For a moment I thought “The hardy pick” was a sort of selling point tagline. 🙂

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    2. Yes I love those permanent names. Nothing looks permanent on the High Street now.

      You do see model shops in more town than you’d believe. I guess the stock lasts forever and the shopowner needs little staff ”

      Hungry Horse is the bargain basement Greene King chain, it’s where family go for meals that would have cost pretty much the same 20 years ago. I’m no snob but the food is inedible !

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      1. Mark,
        Yes, Hungry Horse is one of nearly a dozen brands of brewer Greene King, Chef and Brewer being a long established and better known one.
        I’ve eaten a few times in Stafford’s Hungry Horse, the King’s Horse built several years ago, and found the meals to be as cheap as a Wetherspoons and not as ‘inedible’.

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      3. Mark,
        Yes, Martin is right and you need to compare then and decide for yourself.
        I can’t remember when I last bought a burger so can’t comment on them but have no reason to believe there’s actually anything wrong with Wetherspoons’s Zebu burgers.
        In my nearby Hungry Horse I’ve eaten from the carvery most often but I’m not sure what the alternative would be in a Wetherspoons as they even dropped Sunday lunches five years for being too complicated.
        Hungry Horses get criticised for being too food orientated but the one not far from me does have a Public Bar type area with pub games for drinkers.

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      4. Mark,
        Wolverhampton will be the best place for you to compare them and decide for yourself as there’s both a Hungry Horse ( Sunbeam ) and a Wetherspoons ( Moon Under Water ) not a five minute walk westwards of the railway station. Then a while in the nearby Great Western will have you realsing that both are only really a distress purchase, except that I have known the Abbot drinking well at 10am in the Sunbeam.

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      5. Mark,
        Look out for the plaque outside the Wetherspoons, the spot where The Stafford Mudgie was ejected by Tim Martin himself after riotous behaviour at 9.30am in the morning. The legend grows.

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  4. “Another shopping expedition to Meersbrook, ”

    That photo above is a brothel, right? I mean, ‘Broadfield’; that suggests a field full of, you know, women? Eager to be, um, harvested?

    “another mysterious “drill bit” added to Mrs RM’s burgeoning collection. ”

    My wife has a small wooden plaque above her bathtub. It reads:

    ‘A woman should have
    a set of screwdrivers
    a cordless drill
    and a black lace bra.’ 🙂

    “She’s going to chop me up and bury me in the little wood shed in the garden, you know.”

    More like mince pies I’d say. 😉

    “Mrs RM has reached “favoured customer” status already.”

    Always get in good with the locals!

    “where the headwear is more traditional.”

    Wasn’t he on the Mayflower?

    “Well, I shall have to go to all the Sheffield Hungry Horses to compare the IPA, I suppose.”

    One can dream.

    “Everyone wears face masks outside in Sheffield, and would rather throw themselves in front of an oncoming tram than come with 2 metres of you on the pavement.”

    Blimey! Are they all pod people?

    “I stand in the road to take a pic of the Broadfield.”

    *cough* brothel *cough*

    “The blue tiling tells me the Broadfield is aimed at the Sunday Lunch family market, offering a pie menu,”

    Aha! They must get their ‘pies’ from a certain barber. 😉
    (note that I did not mention eating ‘pies’ at a brothel) 🙂

    “Eventually I get bored and climb a hill.”

    I understand there’s a lot of those where you are now.

    “To you it’s a mound, to a Cambridge boy it’s a mountain.”

    (slow golf clap)

    Cheers

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      1. I thought the classic was “Mary likes the Cock Inn, Tillet, Herts, where she really appreciates their food and is partial to having pork in cider” No?

        (Shame there’s no such place)

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