Plough Inn, Crosspool, Sheffield

Developers have won a planning appeal to demolish the pub.

The Plough has the distinction of standing opposite the oldest football ground in the world, the home of Hallam FC, the second oldest club. The building itself is quite a grand looking stone-built affair with double gables, but inside it's been mucked about by a string of brewery and pub chain interior designers over the years so that nothing of any antiquity remains. The layout of the pub is awkward despite all the improvements, and strangely there is no pool table or darts board. There were five hand pumps on the long bar which runs along the right hand side wall, with four beers on at the time of our midweek visit: Bradfield Farmers Blonde, Wychwood Hobgoblin, Sharps Doom Bar and Sheffield Summer Rock Peach, a beer that even the brewery's own website makes no mention of - like all beers flavoured with peach, probably best forgotten. Avoiding the bland blonde and the bland brown bitter, I went for the Hobgoblin, which was unmemorable. There's nothing particularly wrong with this pub, but I found it a little too bland and slightly disappointing - imagine how I'd have felt if it had been me that had gone for the peach beer.