23 Alma Street
Kelham Island
Sheffield
S3 8SA
0114 249 4801
info@thefatcat.co.uk
Traditional Town Pub, 1* Heritage Pub
The Fat Cat is in Kelham Island which was a run down former industrial area when the pub opened. It now has an industrial museum, restaurants, cafes and pubs like the Kelham Island Tavern and the Ship, and it’s fair to say that the pub was an important player in the revival of the area.
Dave Wickett and Bruce Bentley bought the Victorian pub in 1981 and not only created one of the first independent real ale pubs in the UK but brought in a range of beers never seen before in Sheffield. Mild ale had disappeared from the brewery owned pubs in the city so the only beer sold (other than lager) was bitter. I lived in Sheffield before the Fat Cat opened and it was common to walk into a pub and just ask for ‘a pint’ – there was only one choice. So it’s hardly surprising that the Fat Cat was a big success.
It has a changing selection of 9 cask ales, mostly from small independents, which occasionally include the award-winning Pale Rider which originally came from the now closed Kelham Island Brewery next door. The brewery building is still there but Pale Rider is now brewed by Thornbridge.
The pub is traditional and largely unaltered with two rooms and a corridor with a terrazzo floor. The tap room has an unusual canopy on the bar with a clock which came from a butchers in Rotherham. The entrance has a well worn mosaic floor with the logo of original owners, Stones Brewery. In the pub garden there is a replica of the pub’s inn sign when it was the Alma, selling Stones beers.
A mural of the pub (and a cat) was added to the corner wall in 2018 by Sheffield artist Matt Cockayne, and on the wall above the spacious garden there’s a mural of local hero Jarvis Cocker.
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