Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: South Yorkshire

Rotherham – Ibis Rotherham East

This is now routinely the cheapest Accor hotel venue in the country (although it’s the fifth cheapest tonight, Ibis Lincoln is down to £34), priced even lower than the Ibis Budget hotels. I’ve now stayed here twice and the room rate has averaged £26 a night, which is to be fair not very sustainable. However, they don’t need it to be sustainable as the hotel is coming to the end of its 25 year lease and it’s on the market for £4 million and will cease being an Accor hotel in a few months.

I had a seven minute wait for check-in as there were no staff visible. It’s never entirely optimal, but I don’t think they were expecting many guests to check-in. I had two bookings, one of four nights and another of one night, but they didn’t have the technology to merge the two bookings and I often think it’s just best to keep them separate to avoid confusion. All the staff members were helpful and personable, it was probably the main thing that was keeping everything together at the moment.

The room is dated, but serviceable. It’s the old style Ibis design which was phased out several years ago, but I imagine there was little point making a large-scale investment at this stage. The broken hairdryer holder in one room had its last electrical safety check in 2007 to show how little has changed here. The bathrooms need a refit and they need to have the traces of mould removing as well, that’s a slightly sub-optimal arrangement.

I was disappointed when I e-mailed the hotel to say I might not be there for the first night (it was the day of the storm) and they didn’t burden themselves with taking the time to reply. I will be disappointed if I have to chase up the 200 points I got from the above ‘skip the clean’ offer, but I suspect I’ll have to. As a comparison, I e-mailed Ibis Budget Warsaw Centrum a couple of weeks ago to tell them I might be arriving at 01:00 (I’m aware they didn’t need to know this, but they do say to let them know) and they responded within three minutes.

They didn’t mention the welcome drink at check-in, but it was willingly given when I asked for it.

For my purposes, the hotel was generally clean and it represented excellent value for money when taking into account this is boosting my room stay nights at a very low price as I return to Platinum this year. It offers breakfast and meals, but they don’t try very hard to push these, and when I walked by the restaurant area was nearly always empty. It’s a challenge given that they’ve got a McDonald’s literally in front of the hotel, and a Greene King pub next to it. It’s a tired hotel and a country mile behind the standards of Ibis in Poland in particular, but at the price point they’re charging, I was entirely happy. There was some internal noise, but no external noise, with the temperature in the rooms being appropriate. There’s a good chance that I’ll stay here again before they cease being an Accor venue, especially as the regular First buses to Maltby to Sheffield go by the main road adjoining the hotel.

January 31, 2025
Rotherham – Rhinoceros (Closed JD Wetherspoon)

It’s fair to say that there are a few minor defects that stop this former JD Wetherspoon pub from reopening. I’m not a builder, but I can see some things that I suspect need fixing.

The pub was the first Wetherspoon venue in Rotherham when it opened in 1998, although the Bluecoat was later added and that remains trading. The pub was closed by Wetherspoons in October 2019, when it opened under new owners and they remained trading until an arson attack in December 2021. It’s expected to be demolished later in 2025 and new flats and retail units put up in its place. I hadn’t realised that Rotherham once had a third Wetherspoons venue, which were all open at the same time, named the Corn Law Rhymer although that’s now looking permanently closed as well.

A few of us visited the pub back in 2017 and these were the glory years when they sold the pastrami bagels. This is the only photo that I took inside the pub, so that’ll just have to do as my memory of the Rhino.

Luckily, the Google reviews for the venue are still visible, so some of the complaints live on even if the building doesn’t. A fair chunk of the reviews were about other customers, including a male who used the female toilets and a customer who kept licking the window.

January 29, 2025
Sheffield – Shakespeares Ale & Cider House

Back on my little expedition around Good Beer Guide listed pubs, I have visited this one before with friends back on 2 November 2019 when I was suitably impressed by the Milky Joe milk stout from Ridgeside Brewing Co, which sadly closed last year. The pub was built as a coaching inn in the 1830s, but Punch acquired it and then managed to have it closed down before it reopened under independent owners in 2011.

The team member was writing this up when I went in, so this might not be entirely complete. There’s a mostly cask option, but numerous craft keg beers to choose from as well.

Quirky and atmospheric and my first beer was the Crimes in Riwaka from Pentrich Brewing Co (Riwaka are a hop from New Zealand) which was punchy and dank, with stonefruit and zestiness to it. It’s not the brightest of pubs in terms of the decor, but I suspect that it would have felt rather more charismatic when customers started to come in. The pub feels old fashioned, but that’s what it’s meant to do, this is a traditional pub with a well curated selection of beers.

The second half pint was the Espresso Stout from Cross Borders Brewing Co, a pleasant tasting stout with a roast coffee flavour, although it was a little thin for the 5.3% ABV.

There are hundreds of beer mats decorating the venue and it’s won numerous awards over the years, both from organisations such as CAMRA and direct from the denizens of Sheffield.

How lovely. It wasn’t very busy when I got there, but it was a wet weekday afternoon and they’d just opened for the day, but the welcome was friendly and personable. A nice pub, although I think matters could be improved with a bar billiards table. Although, I think that, I suspect it’s me thinking about my playing in the World Championships in Sudbury (I mean, where else?) in late March…..

January 28, 2025
Maltby – Church of Saint Bartholomew

The Church of Saint Bartholomew is in a slightly odd place (I mean within the town, I’m not suggesting that Maltby is odd), suggesting that it was built before much else and there might well have been a Saxon church on the site which would explain quite a lot.

It’s an attractive building from the exterior, quite neat and tidy.

The entrance gates.

The nave and chancel of the church are of limited interest, but this tower is quirky and much older than the rest of the structure.

And here’s the reason for the main part of the church being less interesting architecturally, it’s the 1857 plan for the new building. This wasn’t though naive expectations of permanently larger congregations, something which somewhat dominated a lot of Church of England thinking in the late nineteenth century, this was the reality that the building was “too dilipidated to be repaired”. The local landowners, the congregation and the Incorporated Society for the Promoting the Enlargement , Building and Repairing of Churches and Chapels all came together to fund the repairs.

The church isn’t open to the public other than by prior appointment, although it’s still used for Sunday services.

The church came to national attention in May 1830 when body snatchers stole a body from the churchyard. An Irish newspaper reported:

“Some time during the night of Sunday last, the body of a young woman, named Mary Hall, was stolen out of its grave in Maltby Church yard. On Monday morning the clerk of Maltby observed a quantity of shavings scattered near the side of the grave, which excited his suspicion, and he immediately caused the grave to be opened, when the coffin was found broken in pieces, and the body taken away. The Magistrates of Rotherham issued search warrants on Monday last, and the Medical Hall, in Sheffield, and other surgical institutions have been searched, but without any discovery having been made. The friends of the deceased watched the grave for three nights, and on the following night the body was taken away. In consequence of the above unfortunate circumstance, the mother of the girl is in a state of mental derangement.”

The Sheffield Medical Institution had opened on 2 July 1829 and soon had a reputation for body-snatching, so there’s a high chance that’s where the body went, even though it wasn’t found.

Mary was just 25 when she died and the burial record at the church survives. The situation must have been dreadful for her mother, losing her daughter and then knowing that her body was lying likely not that far away being dissected.

It’s an attractive, and soggy, churchyard. As an aside, the congregation gave money in the 1820s to help those in Ireland struggling with famine, a reminder that this had been a long-term problem in the country and wasn’t just limited to the Great Famine.

Anyway, it’s a rather lovely site, although devoid of any signage about the church’s history and I couldn’t see any older gravestones, although the conditions has meant that a fair number of the stones are quite weathered and worn. A little further down the Maltby Dike, which the church backs onto, is Roche Abbey which was a large monastery until the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

January 28, 2025
Maltby – The Queens Hotel

I spent the morning in Maltby and this is an imposing and impressive building, now operated by JD Wetherspoon. I came out of my way to come here as it’s listed in the Good Beer Guide, such is my commitment to my challenge of visiting as many as I can. There’s an old photo of the building at https://www.old-rotherham.co.uk/QueensMaltby.php?i=1. In 1933, an application for an alcohol licence for a new venue on Muglet Lane was rejected, despite many local miners saying they couldn’t get to the Queens before it closed. It was mentioned in the article that the Queens had a “monopoly value for £9,000” which I had to look up and this means:

“Monopoly value is the difference in value between premises with a licence and premises without a licence. That, of course, may be a very considerable sum. Therefore, in those cases it is provided that where the new licence has been issued and the old licence surrendered, the amount which must be paid is the difference between the two licences. In other words, if there is a public house and the beer licence is surrendered and a hotel business is being obtained, obviously it is only right and proper that the beer licence which is surrendered should be taken into account in assessing the amount.”

The staff might have wished that this new venue had been given a licence, as it was reported in 1935:

“At Rotherham West Riding Court on Monday, Patrick Higgins (42), a miner from Maltby, was bound over for twelve months for assaulting George William Emery, barman at the Queens Hotel”.

By 1972, the hotel was advertising that they had topless go-go girls with a light show. I suspect that the more traditional had somewhat died away by this point.

Um, well I suppose that’s a claim to fame.

Some history about the building.

Another traditional breakfast and unlimited coffee, coming to a total of £4.18. Egg was a bit hard and the toast was cold, but I can’t much complain given the price. The new area manager was in the pub today, one of the customers wanted to ask her about beer mats but didn’t dare. I decided not to get involved. Service at the pub was friendly and everything seemed clean and tidy, although the temperature was quite cold (although just right for me) and they had some customers huddling around the real fires.

It’s a large building, actually perhaps a little bit too big and the furniture feels all a bit over the place.

This half pint of Kismat from Beermats Brewing Co cost just 90p and was quite a complex porter, with tastes of coffee, dark chocolate and a roasty flavour.

The on-line reviews, which I feel a compulsive need to check, are around average for a JD Wetherspoon outlet, although there are a heap of angry customers who have been charged £75 for parking in the car park without registering their details.

“Very rude customer service by the bar staff 🙄 I was served food that had a dead slug in the salad and then told I couldn’t go in for a month just because I sent the salad back and we also had to wait half an hour just for a desert”

I want to hear the other side to this one….

“When dealing with a small matter the staff came with 4 members and were very rude and completely dismissive. They were passive aggressive and what could have been dealt with easily they were very much on a power trip and totally uncalled for.”

And this one. Often “a small matter” is that a customer has smashed up a table or similar.

“After coming here since I was 13years old with just my friends for tea it has now been said we can no longer come without an adult after showing us a policy that is situated hidden behind condiments (which is not clearly visible) and apparently this policy has always been in place but isn’t clearly shown around the pub ie at the bar or on the walls , in toilets etc but we have always been served at the bar without question, never asked if we were with adults ever and so have been asked to leave which we have (bearing in mind we were served by “assistant manager “) but I’m sure the manager will have a shock when head office gets proof of the pub serving 17 year old girls with alcohol after he had been warned his staff were serving under age , he clearly likes to turn a blind eye when it suits !”

I doubt head office were much concerned…..

“The chicken was more like cat and the egg was a joke rubber egg thank God for plenty of mayonnaise and sauces”

I’m not sure that I know what cat tastes like.

“Bar staff to slow takes u half an hour to get served I no I run pubs for green king”

Greene.

“This is a basic bakery it’s supposed to be a truck stop the food and facilities on site for hgv drivers are for food very poor showers are dated and some are broken it’s a hard stand parking but security is a source of concern and it’s quite noisy as well would only stop as a last resort”

And a review for some other venue to add to the mix, but I like the idea of a Wetherspoon pub being a truck stop.

On another matter, the local CAMRA group seems obsessed with leaving comments such as this:

“The cider is no longer classed as real by CAMRA”

I know there are some CAMRA groups that would really rather comments like this weren’t listed and I don’t much like it as it seems to be making an argument when one isn’t needed. They’re referring to cider manufacturers such as Snails Bank and the like, which, to be honest, are still ciders and so most people (and many CAMRA people) consider as real. For anyone interested, CAMRA have got their purist list at https://camra.org.uk/promotional-campaigns/promoting-real-cider-and-perry/map, but it’s rare for a branch to mark this all over the Whatpub pages and I can’t see what point they’re trying to prove.

It’s an impressive building, I suspect that it would be hard for many other operators to make a venue of this size to work, so they’re fortunate to have JD Wetherspoon take over. There were six real ales on, all keenly priced and they seemed well curated. Definitely a decent addition to the Good Beer Guide.

January 27, 2025
Bramley (Rotherham) – War Memorial (Roy Geoffrey Scott)

Further to my post about the war memorial at Bramley, near to Rotherham.

The story of Roy Geoffrey Scott piqued my interest as he was a young casualty and he died very near to the end of the war. He was born on 6 July 1926, the son of Thomas Scott (1860s?-1930s?) and Mary Ann (nee Sadler) (1884-1978) who lived at 2 Bentley Road in Bramley. Roy joined the East Lancashire 1st Battalion as a Private, army number 14810893. Roy died on 12 April 1945 when crossing the River Aller and is buried at Becklingen War Cemetery (located between Hamburg and Hanover), one of 2,401 to be buried there.

One of three missing men from the battalion.

The Lancashire Infantry Museum notes that:

“From the Rhine to the Elbe At the end of March both Lancashire battalions crossed the Rhine and began the final advance across the North German Plain. 1st East Lancashires first took an active part in the battle for Bocholt, 28-29 March, then, like the South Lancashires, moved through the eastern border areas of Holland, mopping up enemy stragglers. German defences were based on water obstacles, and the East Lancashires then took part in fighting on the Ems-Weser Canal near Ibbenburen, 6th-7th April, and at the assault crossing of the River Aller on the 12th, with another heavy engagement at Kirchlinteln on the 16th, before occupying Hamburg on 4th May.”

Roy never made it to Hamburg, where he would have been one of the forces who took control of the city.

I asked Google Gemini for more information and it discovered:

“The River Aller, flowing through Lower Saxony, Germany, presented a significant obstacle to the Allied advance in the spring of 1945. Securing crossings over the Aller was crucial for maintaining momentum and preventing the Germans from establishing a defensive line along the river. The Battle of Rethem, fought from April 9th to 11th, exemplifies the strategic importance of the Aller . The small town of Rethem, with its bridge over the river, became a focal point for both sides. The British 53rd Welsh Division faced a determined defence by German forces, including the 2nd Marine Infantry, Eisenbahn-Flak units equipped with 128mm cannons, and SS troops . The initial British assaults on Rethem were repulsed, highlighting the strength of the German defences . However, the British eventually outmanoeuvred the Germans by crossing the Aller at Westen and flanking the defenders, forcing them to retreat . This victory allowed the British to establish a Bailey bridge at Rethem and continue their advance towards Hamburg.”

Roy’s gravestone in Germany. Every death is sad, but this is particularly poignant as Victory in Europe Day is 8 May 1945, less than a month after he died.

January 27, 2025
Bramley (Rotherham) – War Memorial

There’s something very reassuring about a war memorial which is well tended and looked after. There are 47 names on the First World War list and 17 names on the Second World War list.

A rather lovely little area, very respectful.

The full list of names:

Asbery, E
Baker, R W
Birch, J
Bizby, E
Bradbury, A
Bradley, A
Brown, A
Brown, H
Bucktrout, H
Cakebread, A
Carney, J
Cliff, S
Davison, R
Gratton, J
Guest, S
Hands, J T
Haywood, F
Holmes, A
Holmes, F
Humphries, S
Jackson, A
Limb, T
Locke, J
Locke, M
Lubbock, R
Mangham, C
Mcknight, A
Metcalfe, H
Milns, E
Mirfin, G D
Morley, E M
Mowbray, J
Palmer, W
Parker, J
Parker, S
Parry, A
Perkins, H
Purseglove, F
Rhodes, J
Robinson, P
Rodgers, J L
Ross, H
Sayles, H
Schofield, A
Scholey, T
Scott, Roy Geoffrey
Seneschall, H
Seston, E
Short, J
Short, J H
Smith, A
Smith, J
Smith, S
Taylor, A
Taylor, W
Teale, A
Thornton, G
Thorpe, P
Titley, M
Trotter, F
Walker, D
Walker, W
Waltch, S
Williams, H

January 27, 2025
Sheffield – Hymn to Ninkasi

I noticed this venue on Untappd and it looked like it had an intriguing variety of beers available. They’re primarily a craft beer shop with plenty of bottles and cans to choose from, but they also have three beers on keg to add to the variety. The welcome was friendly, conversational and engaging, although they didn’t have any other customers for the entire time that I was there. They’ve got the 2025 Putty in can and I was hoping that they might have it on draft, but unfortunately not. The environment was clean and comfortable, although the team member said that she was surprised by how few customers had come in. It’s a challenging time of year to be fair, but I hope that they’re doing well generally.

I went for the 2024 edition of the Fairytale of Brew York, one of my favourite breweries. I’ll just copy and paste my Untappd description of the beer as that seems easier:

“I like a bit of smokiness 🙂 sweet, lactose and smooth…. good in short doses. Like me really.”

It’s a really decent venue and they have over 220 different beers available, so there is something that nearly everyone in that mix. They haven’t picked up any negative reviews yet, so they’re obviously doing something of a grand job. There’s an external seating area as well if you can catch the 25 minutes of sun that is available over the next three months, which adds considerably to the total number of seats given how small it is inside.

January 27, 2025
Sheffield – Salt

I’ve been to Salt’s brewery in the sunny town of Saltaire and this is their outpost in the Kelham Island area of Sheffield. Note the rather lovely gateway, although it’s hard to miss, which the brilliant Nikolaus Pevsner said was the “most spectacular survival of factory architecture in the city”.

Some of the keg range.

And some of the cask range, with Ossett being one of the owners of Salt Brewery, hence their presence here.

The Alpacalypse from Salt, a clean tasting pale which has some fruit flavour to it, slightly lemony. There was a bit of sweetness and it’s certainly sessionable, I imagine quite agreeable to the lager drinkers as well.

The Jet from Ossett Brewery, a oaty, roasty real ale with a bit of coffee taste to it.

It’s a busy venue with a younger crowd buying lagers and it wasn’t quite clear to me why they’d pick here over anywhere else. The food option is Seoul Chicken which looked rather agreeable on the menu, although I didn’t see anyone ordering anything when I was there. Decent mix that though, craft beer and chicken.

Anyway, all rather lovely and I found it useful to charge devices as they’ve conveniently put lots of power points all over the place. The service was friendly, the venue was clean and the atmosphere was inviting. The venue was formerly known as Stew & Oyster, but then they decided not to sell oysters and so it made some sense to change the name. Always positive (well, nearly always positive) to see a mixture of cask and keg.

January 27, 2025
Rotherham : Bailey Bridge (and the chaos of litter in Rotherham)

In my quest for ever more riveting content (and rivets sort of have a link here) I’ve been to a bridge in Rotherham. This isn’t the bridge I’m making reference to, but it’s good exercise as there’s another bridge behind this one (sort of visible in the photo) to get to it.

It’s this one. It’s a surviving Bailey Bridge and it’s particularly appropriate here, as Sir Donald Coleman Bailey was born in the town and was educated at Rotherham Grammar School. This one was used during the Second World War and was acquired from the army for £300, paid for by Rotherham Council and Rawmarsh UDC, opening in 1947.

As this board notes, the bridge is strong enough to hold a tank.

On a more unfortunate note, the litter problem in Rotherham is unlike anything else I’ve seen before as it seems to be nearly everywhere. These photos just happen to be either end of the bridge I went to visit, but it feels like this throughout the town.

A once beautiful riverbank.

There are tens of thousands of pieces of litter in a relatively small area, the council appears to have entirely lost control and this is repeated throughout the bits of the town that I’ve walked through (which is quite a lot for various reasons this weekend). This article refers to a different park nearby, but hopefully the next generation will be a little more caring towards the environment. Anyway, it’s a nice bridge and as part of the development of Forge Island in the town they’ve commissioned a new Bailey bridge which is now in position. That’s the end of my posting about bridges in Rotherham I think unless I happen across another interesting one.

January 26, 2025