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Picture source: Chris Downer

The Market Tavern was situated on Exchange Street. This pub opened in 1797 and was rebuilt in both 1909 and 1914. It was also known as The Garden.

The pub closed in 2006, prior to the closure of Castle Market in 2013, but during the latter’s heyday, it was a bustling centre of the market community. It was to be refurbished as part of the regeneration of the former Castle Market area, but during work to remove asbestos it was discovered that the chimneys were unstable, and posed a risk to the public. Whilst work to make the chimneys safe was undertaken further assessments by the Council’s Building Control officers found the whole building was unsafe, and needs to be demolished. The work will take place within the next few weeks. According to CAMRA, the pub opened in 1797, was rebuilt to follow a new street line in 1909 and then completely rebuilt by Sheffield brewery, Thomas Berry & Co. in 1914. Opinion is divided regarding the origin of the then ‘Rotherham House’ name. Either this was due to ownership by Rotherham-based, Bentleys Brewery, or proximity to the start of the Rotherham tram service. 1961 plans illustrate the installation of a Wimpy Bar on the front of the pub (N.W.Oldfield, Architect & Surveyor for Tennant Brothers Limited: see Sheffield Archives: MC/DC/235 ). Introduced to the UK in 1954, Wimpy is a multinational hamburger restaurant chain. In 1968, the pub became the ‘Old No.12,’ a Berni Inn and Berni Inns, provided Tudor-looking false oak beams and white walls. 1982 saw a take-over by Mecca and a change of name to the Garden. In 1995, it was sold to Whitbread and rebranded as Beefeater/Brewers Fayre. Other names associated with the site are The Sun, and Double 6. It was said to be haunted by a ghost named Charlie.

Kathy Ludlow (December 2023)

The BBC News website has reported that it appears that after the announcement of the proposed demolition (scheduled for 10 January 2024), the Hallamshire Historic Buildings (HHB) group immediately raised objections and, with the support of the heritage charity SAVE who had offered a 'fully-funded immediate assessment" of the building by a structural engineer, and which it claimed was accepted, a meeting with the Council on 9 January, secured an hours-long pause in start of the demolition. However, the demolition recommenced the following morning, and within an hour of HHB being informed of the decision, the whole of the top floor of the building had been demolished. The Council claimed that the building's old Turret structure had collapsed into the building "on its own", but a HHB spokesperson said that the building had "withstood gales a few weeks ago" and was sceptical it would have "spontaneously" begun to "fall down by itself just hours after the authority agreed to pause its demolition". A Council spokesperson said: "A meeting has been held with members of the Castlegate Area Regeneration Board, composed of different stakeholders in the area, who have been given all the information regarding the state of the building and have jointly agreed that the best course of action would regrettably be to continue with the demolition.” The Council also said that it would try and retain "as much heritage value" as possible from the demolition for potential use within the wider regeneration of Castlegate.

Kathy Ludlow (January 2024)

The BBC has reported (6 Feb 2024) that Sheffield Council has now admitted that the pub was demolished in error. A spokesperson has said that "New information has since come to light which shows the demolition company were instructed in error at 11:53 GMT to continue with demolition" Ben Miskell, chair of Sheffield's transport, regeneration and climate committee said the decision to demolish the pub had not been "taken lightly". "Throughout the process I have been keen that partners are kept fully informed. I am disappointed that this does not appear to have been the case and people have been provided with inaccurate information. We will be writing to partners to apologise and will be launching an internal investigation to understand exactly what went wrong."

Kathy Ludlow (February 2024)

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