The Rutland Arms, Sheffield: The popular Yorkshire pub which is just like a much-loved relative
You’re making yourself comfy, nursing the drink of your choice, and quietly contemplating either the evening ahead, or the day that has gone before.
And you start musing about the character of the pub in which you sit. Its qualities and virtues.
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Hide AdThe way that it fits in with the customers – or maybe, the way that it doesn’t. You look around at all the things that please, and perhaps one or two that don’t.


The Rutland is singular, in that it does indeed take on an almost human form. Were it to be given body and soul, it would become a rather scruffy, but much-loved and admired relative.
Scruffy, it has to be qualified, as in a great-uncle, slightly down at heel, with a colourful past and a sack load of stories to recount.
The sort of man who turns up out-of-the-blue on a Sunday afternoon, just as the family’s roast lunch is about to be served.
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Hide AdIt’s almost as if he had a whiff of the fresh gravy, and made a beeline for the front door. It’s a case of, for everyone in the vicinity of the table, “fhb”.
Older readers will recall those initials as standing for “family, hold back”, ensuring that the unexpected guest got a square meal, even if other went without that extra slice of lamb, or a piece of crackling.
Uncle, as at the Rutland Arms, has seen far better days, but a thorough wash and brush up would spoil the charm, and the atmosphere.
There’s one large room and a single bar, with a beer garden to the rear that sports a refulgent hydrangea.
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Hide AdEvery square inch of wall-space is taken up with beer mats, ancient and modern and, on scrutiny, not one of them is a duplication.
High shelves support vintage beer bottles and cans, and there’s also a rather incongruous dummy’s head, which once belonged to a ventriloquist’s doll.
There are blackboards listing menu choices and a glorious range of wines and whiskies.
Banquette seating runs around the space, elsewhere there are comfortable stools, wooden tables and a dangerously comfortable and well-worn squishy two-seater Chesterfield.
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Hide AdThere’s a juke-box, and the clientele are students, creatives, older patrons and those who know that, like that mythical great-uncle, they will be welcomed, regardless and whenever.
Beers include Park Hill, Marble…..you name it, they’ve got it. The choice is staggering, so it’s no wonder that this is a CAMRA favourite.
Great-uncle or no great-uncle, here we have one of the best pubs in South Yorkshire. No question at all.
Welcome 5/5
Food 5/5
Drinks choice 5/5
Prices 5/5
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