The Hallamshire House, Crookesmoor, Sheffield

This is a very smart, contemporary looking bar housed in a pleasant traditional pub, creating an unusual, yet strangely satisfying combination of old and new. You enter into a wooden floored bar area with walls painted in pastel shades. Either side of the front door there are seating areas, both of which have banquette and low stool seating and their own fireplace, with the left hand snug sporting a particularly attractive curved leather banquette. The front windows have nice stained glass and both areas have a selection of old photos on the walls. Beyond the bar area, the pub opens out with a large lounge on the left with access to the servery. There is plenty of seating in the bright, open area as well as another fireplace, surrounded by a mirror and various antlers and horns. On the right hand side is the snooker room, with a full size table available. There is padded bench seating around the room, although obviously no tables. The room has nice dark wood panelling with floral wallpaper above, again mixing the old and new to good effect. A staircase in the middle of the pub leads down to a small covered courtyard at the rear of the pub which has a few benches and barrels as well as an old sofa, but it doesn’t seem to get much sun and was generally a bit scruffy and out of keeping with the rest of the pub. 50’s era music played throughout my stay, but it was at a quiet volume and therefore unobtrusive. The pub was taken over by Thornbridge back in 2011 and all of the hand pumps were dispensing their own beers. There was a good choice of Wild Swan, Black Harry, Ashford, Kipling, Jaipur, Sequoia, Calaxia, Pica Pica and house beer Les’s Best, with Kipling and St Petersburg available on the key keg system. The barman was very friendly and offered me the chance to sample the cask and keg versions of the Kipling – another mix of modern and traditional. Interestingly, the keg version tasted better despite being a little too cold and the barman talked enthusiastically about the benefits of the key keg method of dispense. I really liked this place and thought it would appeal to a lot of people. Thornbridge have done a good job of creating a modern feeling bar that will also please the traditionalist. This was my first experience of a Thornbridge pub and on this evidence I would be keen to find some others.

A former Ward's house that has been taken over by Thornbridge following the retirement of the former landlord, Les May. The pub has been redecorated throughout with paint from the grey-green end of the spectrum, but there is still the old-fashioned red leather bench seating in the snug, and monochrome pictures of "old Sheffield" still adorn the walls. This is a fine old pub which formerly had an unfortunate reputation for poor beer quality, so although Thronbridge beers are not among my favourites, it is now definitely worth a visit. The snooker table is in a timber-framed and panelled extension to the rear, the other half of which forms the back lounge. The snug is to the left upon entering, and another small front room is to the right. The bar has five hand pumps, serving Thornbridge beers including, on my recent visit, Les's Best, a beer not mentioned on the Thornbridge website, but presumably intended as both an imitation of the old Ward's bitter and in honour of the former landlord.

The Hallamshire House will reopen on 15/09/2011 as the newest venture from Thornbridge brewery.

The Hallamshire House is one of the few pubs in Sheffield to offer a full size snooker table (and a room big enough to play it in without cueing into walls or asking punters to move out the way). There is little else to recommend it however - the ale selection is severely limited (Deuchars & Black Sheep if memory serves) alongside standard lagers. Draws a mixed student/locals crowd, but not one of Sheffield's finest.