Dave Wickett bought the old Alma for £33,750 in 1981 and made it one of Britain's first real-ale freehouses — a Grade II listed corner of Kelham Island that introduced the country's first no-smoking pub room in 1982 and has sat in the Good Beer Guide for more than thirty consecutive editions. His son Ed has run it since Dave's death, and the pub's other legacy brews on next door in spirit: Kelham Island Brewery, which Dave founded in the car park in 1990 and whose Pale Rider took Champion Beer of Britain in 2004, closed in 2022 and was revived that autumn by a consortium of Sheffield music and Thornbridge brewing figures — a separate ownership now, told separately, with the revived Pale Rider's first pint poured, correctly, at this bar. The Fat Cat is where Sheffield's beer renaissance was invented; the city has never stopped drinking to it.
Surveyed