Pub 55, Day 21 – The Mulberry Tavern

By Rob

The Mulberry Tavern, in its present-day form, dates back to the 1970s when the original building was demolished and replaced with the new concrete block. At the time of its deconstruction, the original pub was one of the oldest buildings in the city, having been built around 1725. 

The original Mulberry Tavern
(courtesy of Picture Sheffield)

One theory surrounding the pub’s name relates to the decree of King James I, who considered silk to be ‘the most profitable commodity for the country’ and ordered that Mulberry trees – the food source for silkworms – should be planted wherever possible.^[1] In response to the Crown’s designs, the gardens between High Street and Norfolk Street became home to a number of the plants, just a stone’s throw away from the site of the pub.^[2]

Moving over from The Roebuck, we
stood outside The Mulberry Tavern and looked on at the somewhat uninviting exterior. We knew the pub didn’t have a fantastic reputation and the rundown entrance-way did little to ease our
worries. Steeling ourselves, we headed inside.

Once up the stairs we found ourselves in a reasonably-sized, open taproom. The almost deathly silence of the Tavern was broken only by the occasional ‘pop’ of the cueball on the pool table at the far side of the room. Apart from us and the guys on the baize, the only person present was the barman.

We ordered two pints of McEwan’s Lager Cold, which can only be an improvement on McEwan’s Lager Warm. We were pleased about getting hold of a lager on Pubquest, a treat made startlingly rare by our adherence to the different-drink-in-every-pub rule. The McEwan’s was a crisp and refreshing change from the usual line-up of ales.

Sitting in the pub, with only a few local blokes for company, we didn’t feel as if getting our phones out and snapping pictures of the furniture from every angle would endear us to the punters. However, we knew we needed a photo for the blog and so, like the pathetic cowards we are, we held our phones down at about knee-level and took a couple of very poor pictures, before hurriedly stuffing them back into our pockets. I think you’ll all agree that the result, which represents the clearest and best-angled photograph of the session, was not remotely worth the effort.

Quietly sipping at our pints, it was hard to imagine that the pub had once been a gay bar called Affinity. The public house interior had, not too long previously, been coated in black tiles with glitter balls hanging from the ceiling.^[3] Funnily enough, the incoming landlord had decided that the dance cages wouldn’t fit in with his new theme.

Although The Mulberry Tavern is unlikely to win any awards, its rough reputation appears rather undeserved. It certainly isn’t as intimidating as it looks from the outside, and both staff and customers alike offered us polite smiles upon arrival. We had been to worse places, and there were certainly much darker visits on the horizon.

One thing I am sure of, however, is that the pub would have been much more interesting had it still been standing in its original form – although who knows how a visit to the old Mulberry Tavern might have ended. After all, a travelling businessman once stayed overnight at the Tavern and was found dead in the cellar the next morning. It was assumed that he had fallen through a trap door. Oddly, the man had no identification with him, a large sum of money in his possession, and not one person came forward to identify him after his death.

Thankfully, both Andy and I were a little less dead upon leaving the pub.

Pub: The Mulberry Tavern (10 Arundel Gate, S1 2PP)

Rating: 4/10

Pint: McEwan’s Lager Cold

Brewery: Wells & Young's Brewery (Bedford) 

NEXT UP: Introducing our girlfriends, at the Broomhill Tavern...

---

References:
[1] The Silk Grower and Farmer's Manual, Volume 1, Harvard University, (1838), P.98 

[2] Peter Tuffrey, Sheffield Pubs; Landlords and Landladies, Fonthill Media, (2012), pp.94-95

[3] Sheffield's Tavern is back on top, Sheffield Telegraph, http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news/sheffield-s-tavern-is-back-on-top-1-6444141