Abbeydale Picture House: Episode IV — A New Hope

Good afternoon readers — and welcome to our Monday briefing.

At least based on how many emails we get from readers asking for an update, the Abbeydale Picture House must be the most-loved building in the city. It would make sense: it’s beautiful, historic and on one of Sheffield’s busiest roads. But it’s also laying empty, and actively falling apart. At the moment, it seems like the path to bringing this building back into use has finally cleared. But, after getting our hopes up so many times, is the city of Sheffield going to be let down again? 

We also have an update on city centre pedestrianisation, some good news about local refugees training as nurses and an alternative Valentine’s at the Dorothy Pax.

In case you missed it

Last week we had a huge number of comments in response to our story on the increase in rents in Sheffield, including a big debate over just how rich landlords really are. Join the discussion and read the piece here. We also had a fascinating interview with Sir Paul Collier on how to turn Sheffield’s economy around (here) and a beautiful tribute from Mina Miller to Sheffield’s humble chippies, with some gorgeous photos from Andy Brown.

As ever, if you want to get all our journalism, and support a small but dedicated team trying to make Sheffield better, then join us today.

Editor’s note: We just wanted to explain why we didn’t put out a longer piece about the terrible events at All Saints Catholic High School last week, following a query from a reader.

Under UK law, once a case becomes active (i.e. someone is arrested or charged) publishers are very limited in what they can write about it. This is due to the risk of committing contempt of court, which can in some cases cause trials to collapse if the jury is unable to be impartial. Additionally in this case, the accused is 15 years old, and therefore we are unable to name them. We are also unable to publish any details of what witnesses may have seen, or any information about the history of the accused.

Please be reassured we are following the case closely, and will continue to put out updates when we can in our mini-briefings, as we did last week. After the case has gone to trial, in July, we will publish an in-depth article.

In the meanwhile, if you have any information about the case that you would like to share, you can get in touch at editor@sheffieldtribune.co.uk.

The big picture: Flowers and football tops 💐

Hundreds of floral tributes have been left at Bramall Lane in honour of Harvey Willgoose, the 15-year-old Sheffield United fan who was stabbed to death at All Saints Catholic High School last Monday. As well as flowers, dozens of football tops were also left, including some from other teams including Sheffield Wednesday and Rotherham United. “Willgoose. Forever 15. Love, your Wednesday family,” read one. Thanks to the Steel City Snapper for the above photo.

The big story: Abbeydale Picture House: Episode IV — A New Hope

Top line: The Abbeydale Picture House has been “saved” — not for the first time in recent memory, but hopefully for the last. It’s been over a year since we first wrote about the “uncertain future” of this building, which has been mostly unusable (and actively disintegrating) since late 2021. Last month, the stalemate between the building’s owner and the charity desperate to buy it from him finally came to an end, when it was sold to True North Brew Co, the local company behind a chain of pubs.

A local landmark: The Abbeydale Picture House won the hearts of Sheffielders from the moment it opened back in the 1920s, when it was colloquially known as the “picture palace” thanks to its grandeur. During a recent chat with The Tribune, Professor Vanessa Toulmin described it as one of her favourite buildings in the city — the other is the former Salvation Army Citadel in the city centre — and we regularly receive emails from readers anxious to know if there are any updates on its future. 

The ghosts of arguments past: However, you could make a compelling argument that this beautiful building is somehow cursed. In the last two decades, a number of attempts to return it to its former glory have collapsed — often leaving those involved at loggerheads with each other.

• First, there was the Friends of Abbeydale Picture House, a small charity that bought the building in 2005 and reopened it three years later. As we’ve reported previously, by 2010 the project was already hobbled by infighting and in serious debt — a debt that two former committee members were left paying off out of their own pockets, for the better part of a decade.
• In 2012, the building was sold at auction to Phil Robins, who previously owned The Edge climbing wall, for the modest sum of £150,000. Robins was reportedly keen to turn The Abbeydale Picture House into a new climbing centre, but this project never got off the ground.
• By 2015, a Newcastle-based charity called Hand Of had agreed to assist Robins in renovating the building. Robins and the charity parted ways in early 2017 — allegedly on bad terms — although neither Hand Of or Robins have commented on this period when contacted by The Tribune previously. 
• From that point onwards, Robins rented the majority of the building (excluding the basement) to a new charity, CADS, who were similarly happy to chip in with restoring it. Before long, however, this relationship also disintegrated…

A years-long stalemate: In December 2021, CADS thought their five-year effort to restore the Abbeydale Picture House was on the verge of crossing the finish line. They’d jumped through almost every hoop necessary to turn the century-old building into a legally-complaint, modern venue; all that was left was a quick survey of the plaster ceiling in the main auditorium. That’s when their hopes fell apart — which was also what they discovered the ceiling was doing. 

Since then, the largest space within this grand building has been closed to the public for safety reasons, while CADS and Robins have been locked in a tug of war. According to the lease, the ceiling was CADS’ responsibility, while Robins took care of the roof. However, the charity argued there was no point in them fixing the ceiling until the leaks in the roof above it were resolved, something Robins allegedly refused to do.

Neither side was willing to budge. When CADS refused to pay rent in 2022 — arguing that they were unable to use the majority of the space they were renting — Robins changed the locks. After the charity settled with him and got back into the building, they sued him for £220,000 in damages and began seeking a court order that would force him to fix the roof. 

A huge windfall: However, last March, a huge announcement seemingly paved a way out of this mess. The government awarded CADS a £300,000 grant from the Community Ownership Fund — which they could use to buy the building off Robins and start fixing it up — after the charity applied “as a last chance saloon”. Despite years of not seeing eye to eye, Robins was apparently willing to sell to them and, last May, Dan Butlin from CADS told The Tribune they were in the process of agreeing a price. Robins, who initially wanted £450,000, was reportedly willing to accept £365,000, although the charity hoped to haggle him even lower. 

CADS was confident they had Robins backed into a corner, despite his repeated threats to put the building on the open market. After all, even if someone else was willing to buy a building in need of such serious repairs, they would still have to deal with the large damages claim attached to the property. CADS was willing to drop the lawsuit, but only if they were allowed to buy the building. “No one in their right mind would buy it unless they have an insane amount of money to burn,” Butlin told The Tribune back in May. 

Deus ex machina: But clearly Robins was willing to wait — or perhaps unwilling to accept CADS’ price. Last month, he finally found another buyer, which means CADS will not be able to claim the government grant they were awarded after all. The new owner, True North Brew Co, is the company behind a number of popular local pubs, including the Broadfield just down the road, which bought itself out of administration in the summer of 2023. 

According to True North’s owner, Kane Yeardley, he’s willing to cough up the money needed to make Abbeydale Picture House a “vibrant entertainment destination for all demographics” and “a space buzzing with energy that supports the continued growth of Abbeydale Road and Sheffield as a whole”. Meanwhile CADS is supportive of him taking over — seemingly their threat to resurrect their lawsuit if Robins picked another buyer was an empty one. Dan Butlin from CADS told The Tribune: "We are pleased with the outcome and confident that the venue is in good hands for the future with True North. We are glad that a local business will continue the work of restoring the building and hope The Abbeydale Picture House continues to serve the city as a unique cultural venue. "

‘We’ve got to be realistic’: However, as the BBC recently reported, it’s not going to be easy for True North Brew Co to bring the building back into use. After all, there’s a reason CADS and Robins were caught in a stalemate for so long; the repairs needed will be very expensive. In 2021, when the problems with the ceiling were first discovered, a report estimated that the “emergency works” needed just to stop it getting worse would cost around £107,515, “although much more extensive works [would] be required”. 

Yeardley seems to relish the challenge — “I like buildings that have, what I call, a lot of love marks,” he told the BBC — but he’ll also have an expert in early cinemas on hand to ensure the work is done properly. Professor Vanessa Toulmin from the University of Sheffield told the BBC she was mindful of how many attempts to restore the building had failed in the past. "People fall in love with a building but their business side doesn't usually come to the fore,” she said. "My job is to show True North the importance of it as a venue for Sheffield and they're very aware of that. But we've also got to be realistic, it needs a lot of money."

Our take: As the saying goes, once bitten, twice shy. After seeing attempts to restore the Abbeydale Picture House falter so many times, it’d be easy to assume this effort will go the same way. But the combination of business acumen and heritage expertise driving the project right now gives us cause for real hope. While True North Brew Co did recently have to buy itself out of administration — shedding a debt of more than £2 million to HMRC in the process — it is still a successful local pub chain with a good track record of renovating buildings. Similarly, Professor Toulmin helped Sheffield Council win £15.8m in government funding to regenerate Fargate and the High Street, as well as organising the Mausoleum of the Giants exhibition in Eyewitness Works. If they can’t pull it off then surely the building is actually cursed.

The weekly Whitworth ✏️

Cartoonist James Whitworth with his take on Sheffield’s increasingly pricey rental market.

Your Tribune briefing 🗞️

On yer bike 🚧 As the long-awaited regeneration of Fargate nears completion, work has begun on a £21 million scheme to pedestrianise more of Sheffield city centre. Under the plans, Pinstone Street and parts of Charles Street and Surrey Street will be pedestrianised, while there will be a two way separated cycle route installed on Arundel Gate. The council says the aim is to create open, attractive spaces and better walking, wheeling and cycling routes through the city centre. Work will be done in phases, beginning with an area of Pinstone Street between Charles Street and The Moor, which will be closed for 15 weeks.

Car park sharks 🚗 Oh happy day! Everyone's favourite parking company Excel has announced record profits. The Star reports that 2024 saw the Sheffield-based company book £5.4 million in pre-tax profits, a rise of 33 per cent on 2023, which itself was double the year before. The firm’s financial success has seen the CEO Simon Renshaw-Smith award himself a £108,846 pay rise, meaning he is now paid a cool £761,846. 

The news comes just months after 11 MPs, including Sheffield Central’s Abtisam Mohamed, called on the government to introduce a parking code of practice to stop the industry being able to regulate itself. Our recent piece about Excel Parking is here.

New nurses 🏥 A scheme which helps refugees with nursing backgrounds in their home countries start working in the NHS has seen its first cohort graduate. After a successful year-long pilot during 2024, ReSTORE, which supports refugees in South Yorkshire, held a celebration event in Sheffield last month for 11 nurses who have now graduated from the programme. “These nurses probably had very poor health outcomes, staying at home, being isolated, having low self-esteem, despite being so qualified,” said programme co-leader Blerta Ilazi. “Now they have a job, they have an identity, they have returned to the profession they loved, to the profession they trained [in].”

Coming up

This week, we’ll be sending out two more newsletters to over 2,500 members. For tomorrow’s piece, Dan was bundled into the back of a van and driven to a mystery location where he joined some intrepid metal detectorists on the hunt for treasure under Sheffield’s earth. And on Thursday, Victoria will be taking a look into Homeward — the charity set up by Prince William that’s looking to end homelessness in Sheffield. A year and a half on from its launch, is the royal-backed scheme making a difference?

To get all that in your inbox, just click below.

This week’s weather 🌥️

Our weather forecast comes from dedicated Sheffield weather service Steel City Skies, who say there will be a good deal of cloud throughout, with rain and sleet slowly easing after a damp start. Raw east-northeast winds also moderating by midweek.

Monday ☂ Cloudy and cold with brisk northeast winds and further outbreaks of rain, sleet and some hill snow. Highs of just 4°C.

Tuesday ☂ Remaining cold with further spells of drizzly rain and sleet likely. Northeast winds not quite as keen, and perhaps drier by evening. Highs of 5°C.

Wednesday ☁ A greater chance of a drier day, with lighter winds too. Still cloudy on the whole though, with an increased chance of frost overnight. Highs of 6°C.

Thursday ☁ Brighter spells possible, but models still indicate plenty of cloud. Mostly dry though, with light winds and highs again of around 6°C.

Friday ☁ Light easterly winds continue to feed in plenty of cloud. Most places dry again, with temperatures around 5-6°C and a chance of frost overnight.

Weekend: Remaining cold and often cloudy through the weekend. Low chance of precipitation, with temperatures below average and a continued risk of frosts.

To see the full forecast and keep up to date with any changes to the outlook, follow Steel City Skies on Facebook.

Home of the week 🏡

This three-bedroom Edwardian stone-fronted semi in Birley Carr is spread across three floors and is filled with character throughout including a beautiful long hallway, high ceilings, intricate coving, beautifully-preserved woodwork and an Aga. It also has a bathroom which looks like the one in The Shining, which for me is a big plus. It is on the market for £320,000.

Tribune tips: If you want to tell us about a story or give us some information, please get in touch with us by emailing editor@sheffieldtribune.co.uk. We are happy to speak to people off the record, and we guarantee we will treat your information with confidence and sensitivity.

Things to do 📆

Art 🖼️ On Tuesday, enjoy a guided tour of the Graves Gallery and take a closer look at some of the abstract artworks on display. Discover how artists such as Bridget Riley, John Hoyland and Mark Firth experiment with colour, form or line. You’ll take a closer look at a selection of twentieth and twenty-first century works that can all be loosely defined as abstract. The 45-minute tour begins at 2pm and is completely free although a £5 donation is encouraged.

Valentine’s 💘 Also on Tuesday, join storyteller Adrian Finney at the Dorothy Pax for A Very Violent Valentine’s, a captivating and darkly comedic journey into the shadowy depths of Victorian England where love and desire lead to deadly, and at times absurd, consequences. This year’s event promises even more shocking and enthralling tales, delivered with Adrian's signature blend of wit and macabre humour. Tickets are £10 and the show starts at 7pm.

LGBTQ+ 🏳️‍🌈 February is LGBTQ+ history month and there is a full programme of events in Sheffield. On Wednesday at Juno Books on Chapel Walk, hear Jane Cholmeley of Silver Moon books talk about her memoir A Bookshop of One's Own. Founded in 1980s London against a backdrop of homophobia and misogyny, Silver Moon promoted female writers and helped create a safe space for women. The one-hour talk is totally free and begins at 6pm.