Campaigners react as historic Sheffield pub deemed 'home of modern football' saved from demolition

The Plough Inn, on Sandygate Road in Crosspool, was a pub across the road from Hallam FC and is the site where the modern game is said to have developed.

The world’s oldest football ground was established on the site, and the rules of modern football- Sheffield Rules- which introduced corners, headers and free-kicks to the game, were rumoured to have been drawn up there.

This afternoon (Tuesday, August 4) a meeting of Sheffield City Council’s Planning and Highways Committee voted today to spare the Plough Inn from demolition- against the recommendation of its planning officers’ report.

The pub itself has been threatened with closure several times in recent years- in 2017 the pub was saved by a community-led campaign after Sainsbury’s tried to turn it into a supermarket.

After this the pub was named an ‘asset of community value’ by the Council, but spent the next few years empty.

Reacting to the decision, local activist Ruth Milsom said: “An 'asset of community value' is exactly that- an amenity that is there for the benefit of the people.

"But it is people - us - who are too often overlooked as the least important consideration when a developer buys up a piece of land, focussed solely on the profit that can be derived from it.

“With the Government poised to change planning legislation to make it very easy to wreck sites of historic and aesthetic value, it is highly symbolic that the Plough has been given a reprieve.”

MP for Sheffield Hallam, Olivia Blake, spoke of the campaign in her maiden speech to parliament, saying: “Local campaigners whp battle to preserve our community heritage, with their struggle to reopen The Plough Inn, home to the second oldest football club in the world, Hallam FC, and where the rules of football were first written down.”

The MP has previously tried to end the deadlock over the Plough’s fate, including asking the Government to bring in legislative proposals to ensure assets of community value facing demolition should be offered to local community groups before demolition is granted.

In the lead up to the Council decision Blake sent a letter to the members of the committee calling on them to preserve the city’s heritage.

She said: “Sheffield is the home of modern football, and the Plough played a vital role in the formation of the game.

"The world’s second oldest football club, Hallam FC, was founded at the site; and similarly the oldest football ground in the world was established—and remains to this day—on the site.”

“It would be tragedy for Sheffield and for sport if this site, a site of huge historic significance and so central to the history of sport, is allowed to be torn down.”

Anne Murphy, local ward councillor and chair of the Sheffield Home of Football, spoke in the meeting to object to the plans and said the site was “indisputably linked” to the game.

Coun Murphy, who also said she lives “around the corner” from the pub and her family and friends were regulars before it closed, said: “The historic value of The Plough pub alone is immeasurable to the residents of Sheffield who care and want to retain as many historic buildings as possible.

“This pub and site is the heart of the home of world football. Other cities would be trying to bring the building back to life and promote it as an asset to the city, not tear it apart.

Ruth spoke of the ‘fantastic’ work that has gone into the campaign to save the pub, and the need for the community to rally round to find a way to restore the pub for the community.

She said: "Campaigners have shown enormous dedication to conserving this heritage building.

"I'm immensely grateful to them, and to Councillor Anne Murphy and Olivia Blake MP for their strong interventions that helped press the case home to our planning authority.

"We must all now get to work to devise a really prosperous future for The Plough as an attractive modern asset in the community."

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