The FatCat

Solicitor Bruce Bentley and Sheffield Polytechnic economics lecturer Dave Wickett bought the pub at auction for £33,750 in 1981, turning it into the Fat Cat, one of the first real ale free houses to break from the big brewers in the city. Wickett later founded Kelham Island Brewery in the yard behind the pub in 1990, though that brewery has since changed hands and is now brewed elsewhere. The Fat Cat itself remains under separate, single-company ownership as The Fat Cat (Sheffield) Limited, pouring almost exclusively from small independent breweries across its handpumps. Two small rooms keep the original tiled floors and etched glass, with a beer garden out back where the old brewery once stood. It was Sheffield's first real ale free house, and priority given to small brewers over big-name lagers has barely shifted since 1981.