July 2025. Stannington. Sheffield.
Back from Newcastle, GBG ticks in the bag, I then added an NCTSS 4 with a “cheeky” crispy beef and Singapore rice from China Dragon outside Darlington station.
It deserves an extra half mark, really, for being open after 10pm when Google says it’s shut.
I genuinely have no idea if anyone is interested in my takeaway, er, takeaways.
And there’s almost certainly no interest in a guide to Sheffield’s Super Suburb of Stannington.
A mile west of Retired Martin Towers (the Blind Monkey), and best seen from Walkley allotments,
where you’ll note the post-war tower blocks.
As I noted during a heroic closed pub crawl during lockdown, the pubs around that Deer Park brutalism haven’t fared well,
but the three in the old village survive, and three (3) is the perfect number for a post-lunch pub crawl.
Confession. I took the Number 81 from the bottom of our hill (it’s all hills) for the full Stannington experience and had an uplifting chat with an 86 year old lady who does the mile walk from Worral to Oughtibridge, and was off walking in Austria next week. When I get to 86, I hope to be dead driving BRAPA to his last GBG pub in the Trossachs.
For some reason I left the bus at the towers, a mile short of the old village pubs.
Was it the lure of Krispy Battered Chips (aka Yannis) ?
Nope. I decided the best way to survive three quiet boozers was by reading, so in the newsagent I scrimmaged through the broadsheets for what would have been my first proper paper for a decade.
How much !!! £3.20 is a pint. I settled for the Sheffield Star for a quid.
Should have spent a quid on a bottle of water; another Sheffield scorcher. They’ll be growing grapes in the Rivelin Valley soon.
Pub No.1. Our friends from the Ribble Valley own this,
but the beers come from Keighley, up the road in Bradfield and wherever Thwaites are brewed nowadays.
Honestly, I neither know nor care about provenance. Or independence. CAMRA should boot me out.
I care about the beer quality, and the Farmers Blonde is a cool and rich NBSS 3.5.
More importantly, the Peacock is packed at at 2:30, mostly genteel diners, but that’s OK.
The lone Old Boy, Tracy without the “a” (I assume) sits in the corner.
“All reet ?”.
“I’m great, how you ?”.
“Fair to lousy, as always”.
We chat about the Big Picture in the Star, the joy of brass bands, and agree that’s a euphonium.
Somehow, the conversation then got onto the 1978 Scotland World Cup song.
Time to leave.
retiredmartin 
In 1978 I translated “Ally’s Tartan Army” (the chorus anyway) into French as part of my O-level revision.
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Allez’s Army ?
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Found Thwaites unexpectedly common in Cirencester this weekend. There’ll be an explanation I guess.
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There will, but I don’t know what it could be. What else did you see on the bar(s) ? Arkells ?
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Yes, plenty of Arkells, but at the places in which I actually got to drink were things such as the Bristol Brewery Everytime (The Snooty Fox, Tetbury) and Butcombe Rare Breed (The Potting Shed, Crudwell.)
It’s a pity that there’re swathes of rural England without a pub for miles these days though.
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Magritte knew what brass bands could mean
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=wL8vwHh9&id=F954A99A3455A4A01F14EE336AC1C3C62892B0F9&thid=OIP.wL8vwHh9Y2sDIfymfloKiAHaFi&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.wixstatic.com%2Fmedia%2Fbca319_edf30687fdd44273aac9dc7d5ca0b02e~mv2_d_1959_1465_s_2.jpg%2Fv1%2Ffill%2Fw_980%2Ch_733%2Cal_c%2Cq_85%2Cusm_0.66_1.00_0.01%2Cenc_auto%2Fbca319_edf30687fdd44273aac9dc7d5ca0b02e~mv2_d_1959_1465_s_2.jpg&cdnurl=https%3A%2F%2Fth.bing.com%2Fth%2Fid%2FR.c0bf2fc0787d636b0321fca67e5a0a88%3Frik%3D%252bbCSKMbDwWoz7g%26pid%3DImgRaw%26r%3D0&exph=733&expw=980&q=magritte+threatening+weather+pics&simid=608042859192068106&form=IRPRST&ck=253CB7C1DFA345F69D0CA36325EC2F02&selectedindex=6&itb=0&pc=APPL&vt=4&sim=11
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…or even this
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I’m not that familiar with the works of Rene Magritte but I do like that song he did about Paul Simon’s dog.
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Well, I keep coming back to this, but René was always smartly turned out. How must his barber have felt? “Would you like to see the back of your head, Sir?”
https://live.staticflickr.com/2414/5758945137_fd910b8c7b_z.jpg
I suppose that Dali’s watch mender would have sympathised
https://i.insider.com/57334575dd0895f9788b4786?width=700
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Blimey Stannington.
We were banished to Stannington College from Sheff Poly to learn practical engineering skills. There was a lovely old stone pub just down the road that did great food. Can’t remember the name now. Looks to be gone, just like the college..
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Funny you mention that. I wonder if you might mean this one down the road from the old college ?
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That was it!
🙂
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I walked to the Robin Hood from Meadowhall soon after the 2007 floods. Lovely pub.
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Unexpectedly, Cirencester has a lone Thwaites pub! Their only one in the south of England, for reasons unclear to me.
Tim Mars
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I feel we need to know, Tim !
Do you see Wainwright in Stroud ?
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Yes Tim and that pub is unexpectedly long, on a corner with Thwaites signs on two streets. This led me to believe that there were two such pubs together.
I excuse myself on the grounds of what so many are apparently so easily led to believe these days.
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Is “unexpectedly” the new “tremendous”?
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Unexpectedly, yes it is.
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Well that’s just tremendous, Martin.
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