Is the tug of war over Abbeydale Picture House finally nearing its end?

Good morning, readers — and welcome to this week’s Thursday edition of The Tribune.

Despite my best efforts, I know relatively little for certain about Phil Robins, the 70-year-old owner of the Abbeydale Picture House. I know that, in 2012, he bought the Grade II-listed building in Nether Edge for a little over £150,000, after its previous owners went bankrupt. I know he is — or at least was — an avid climber, and originally planned to turn it into an indoor climbing centre. I know that he is being sued by Creative Arts Development Space (CADS), a local charity and his tenant for the last seven years, for hundreds of thousands of pounds in damages.

The other thing I know for sure about Robins is that he doesn’t want to speak to me. Attempts to get his side of today’s story through LinkedIn, his personal Facebook page, someone who knows him and a request for comment to his solicitor have all been ignored. What I am left with is the story as told by CADS and the evidence they have been able to provide for some, but not all, of their claims.

Even this account has not been easy to get. As more than one of its employees has acknowledged, CADS is pretty nervous about publicising the details of its dispute with Robins. Despite the fact the charity is suing him, it is also keen to keep its relationship with its landlord as amicable as possible. After all, Robins has something CADS wants desperately: the deed to the Abbeydale Picture House.

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Is the tug of war over Abbeydale Picture House finally nearing its end?

What Dan Butlin, a new father and head of operations at local arts charity CADS, would like to have spent the last few years doing is running an arts venue. A fully licensed one, in a gorgeous building in one of Sheffield’s buzziest neighbourhoods, with space for everything from experimental music gigs to weddings. “It’s what I signed up for: to facilitate arts in this city and make the culture of the city better,” he tells me. Instead, he’s spent that time “mainly just messing around with lawyers and building surveyors”.

This long-held dream of his may have become increasingly vaporous since but, in December 2021, it seemed to be within touching distance. Butlin had spent five years working on the Abbeydale Picture House. Almost every hoop necessary to turn a more than century-old building into a legally compliant, modern venue — fire escapes, disabled access, CCTV, etc — had already been jumped through. All that remained was a survey of the plaster ceiling in the main auditorium to identify any necessary repairs, which CADS expected it could get done by the end of the following February.

According to the report delivered by Ornate Interiors and M Womersleys, both specialists in historic buildings, they were wrong. The ceiling was not just in need of minor works but actively unsafe. “The historic plasterwork within the main auditorium space is unfortunately in a very poor state of repair,” the report reads, meaning it could collapse on top of an unsuspecting audience at any moment. In 2013, a similar plaster roof in a London theatre collapsed and injured almost 60 people. The report stated the ceiling needed “significant emergency works” just to stop it deteriorating further, which the specialists estimated would cost around £107,515, “although much more extensive works [would] be required”. 

The problem, Butlin explains to me, is down to the kind of plaster used, which is “basically plaster of Paris wrapped around hessian fibres”. This was a common choice of material for ceilings built in the 1920s, since it was very cheap and just as strong as more expensive options. “But it turns out that, after 100 years or so, the hessian fibre loses structural integrity, especially if it gets wet.” 

It had gotten wet. The same report noted that, though they were only tasked with surveying the suspended ceiling and not the roof above it, the specialists had seen signs of “significant” leaks in the roof, which had “severely damaged wall and ceiling plaster below” and “exaggerated decay” that would have otherwise occurred as the plaster aged. Although it was not explicitly stated in the report, according to Butlin CADS was advised that there was no point repairing the ceiling until the roof was watertight. “Any repair done would be potentially immediately undone when it got water on it,” he claims.