roof – Modern Mooch

1 Samuel Rd Sheffield S2 3UA

I jumped the tram at Sheffield Station and headed out to Arbourthorne.

Looking for a pub that is no longer a pub, it closed in 2007 – it’s now a convenience store and chippy.

It was once the star of an Arctic Monkey’s promo video When the Sun Goes Down at 1’21”.

It has become a print by Johnathan Wilkinson.

Oh how I loved this place my family drunk in here for years and years, I remember waiting outside on a weekend with a packet of crisps and a glass of coke, waiting for them to come out. I think it was the first place I had my first legal drink, loved the place hate to go past now and see it as a Premier. Anyone seen Dave and Ann lately once upon a time landlord and landlady, does anyone know how they are doing?

Sunday afternoons karaoke and everyone sat outside in the summer – oh the memories.

I used to Drink in there around 1975/76, it was OK in those days, a local wrestler used to drink in there, his name was Alan Kilby, I saw him fight on TV a few times.

Sheffield Forum

The former pub’s striking roof is still striking – sadly the last orders bell stopped striking long, long ago.

The shop was busy and the chips from the chippy were just the job on a cold damp November day.

Changes in the demographics of the area, social trends and the general economic malaise, have ensured that many estate pubs are no longer able to thrive and prosper.

Finally and puzzlingly.

I’ve cycled by here for some fifty years or more – always admiring its serrated roof.

Way back when we would roam around on our bikes, exploring the waste ground adjacent to Jackson’s Brickworks.

Where we would scavenge tape from the Rotunda tip.

I remember it as a Remploy Centre.

My last 13 years prior to retirement last May were spent at the centre, on Windmill Lane, Denton. Just before I left, a lot of demolition work was done, prior to redevelopment of much of the site.

I seem to remember the place always being referred to locally as Th’ Rehab – the Rehabilitation Centre, a Government training centre, where skills were taught, such as joinery, bricklaying etc, and there was also a Remploy Unit housed there.

Local men could go for a free haircut, administered by a well supervised trainee.

Denton History

1949 Manchester Local Image Collection

It is listed in a 1968 directory of rehabilitations centres.

Currently forming part of Tameside Business Park with multiple occupancy.

Proximity to the M60, seen here under construction is paramount to its future success.

This former production plant for concrete components is now sadly partitioned and houses a number of businesses, only one of which still has a manufacturing base. The engineer for the project was also the client; reinforced concrete engineers, Matthews & Mumby. The intention was to create large floor areas, free from columns, to accommodate fourteen casting beds of about fifty metres in length. The structure of the two sheds was formed from arch units assembled on the ground, jacked into position and post-tensioned to form large tied span arches. Each arch spans approximately thirty metres and was designed to carry up to fourteen one tonne loads along the monorail hangers that ran the length of the factory, centred to each casting bed and suspended from the arches. Lantern section glazing hugs the curve of the arches that act as a reflective surface to provide an even light across the factory floor. The rails and hangers added a further louvered filter to the light, described at the time as ‘the ‘venetian blind’ effect. Originally the elevation between the V shaped columns was also glazed, this has now been filled and significantly reduces the aesthetic presence of the exposed structure and a distinctly ‘modern’ building of the time.

Mainstream Modern – my thanks to Richard Brook for the text and archive images.