CONTEXT Historic England has been asked to assess 136-138 London Road, Sheffield (formerly Highfield Cocoa and Coffee House) for listing. The listing application has been prompted by a live planning application (reference 22/03350/FUL) to demolish the building and construct a new five-storey building with ground-floor retail and 22 one- and two-bedroom apartments on the upper floors, in association with converting and altering an adjacent office building on Broom Close. The planning decision is due to be determined on 12 January 2023.

HISTORY AND DETAILS The Highfield Cocoa and Coffee House opened on 9 April 1877 and was aimed at providing a viable alcohol-free environment for working-class men and their families. It was built to designs by Matthew Ellison Hadfield (by this time in practice with his son Charles as M E Hadfield & Son), responsible for the design of many buildings in Sheffield, a number of which are now listed. The cost of the land and construction, estimated to be £4,000, was paid for by Frederick Thorpe Mappin, an important Sheffield industrialist and a major benefactor to the town with a particular interest in education and social reform.

Mappin had previously shown an interest in the temperance movement, chairing a meeting at the Church of England Temperance Society Conference, Sheffield Branch, in April 1876. There were a number of temperance groups in Sheffield from 1831, with a Temperance Hall opening on Townhead Street in 1856, culminating in the British Temperance League moving its headquarters from Preston to Sheffield in 1880. From the mid-C19, nationally there was an expansion of cocoa and coffee houses aimed at working-class patrons, and often directly connected to the temperance movement. The first was recorded in Dundee in 1853, then expansion followed through English towns and cities: in 1861 near Bristol; Leeds in 1867; Dr Barnardo’s ‘coffee palace’ in London in 1873; and Liverpool in 1875 under the auspices of the British Workmen Public House Company Limited. The Sheffield Café Company was founded in 1877, expanding rapidly in Sheffield in the late C19. The applicant suggests that the Highfield Cocoa and Coffee House was likely to have been the first of its type to have been built as a capital investment operating as a commercial venture, rather than by philanthropy and religious conviction.

Contemporary newspaper accounts of the opening described the cocoa and coffee house as the first of its kind established in Sheffield, based upon the successful model of the house in Liverpool, with a billiard room, a reading room and a large coffee room; the latter fitted with marble-topped circular tables and armchairs. Coffee, tea and cocoa was served at a penny a pint. At the rear of the building was a small court for skittles. The 1:2500 OS map surveyed in 1889-1892 and published in 1894 shows the latter to have had a glass roof.

The cocoa and coffee house closed in 1908 due to falling demand and in 1909 George Barlow & Sons, shopfitters, took over part of the building, with the shop being occupied by Fred Dover, confectioner, later part of Hibbert’s confectioners. By the mid-C20, number 138 was listed as Barlow’s, who remained there until at least 2008. In the 1950s, the exterior of the ground floor (then Barlow’s showroom) was remodelled and clad in small grey tiles. Subsequently, seven concrete relief panels by an unknown artist were added over the windows, probably in 1967, during further remodelling.

The two-storey building is built of English bond orange brick in an Italianate style with a shallow-hipped, slate roof with deep modillion eaves. Between the floors is an entablature (now painted green) with a terracotta cornice of swirled florets, with similar florets to the frieze of a narrower, first-floor entablature. The first floor has moulded, round-headed windows with two-pane fixed frames. The ground floor is clad in multi-shade grey tiles with a square-headed doorway at the left-hand end and six square-headed windows to the front elevation, above which are seven identical concrete panels of an abstract relief-carved design – an indistinct newspaper photograph of 1908 indicates that the original configuration was a central doorway flanked by round-headed windows with probable decorative projecting hoods and window tracery. The tiling continues around onto part of the two-bay Keeton’s Hill elevation. At the left-hand end is an original large round-headed doorway. The ground-floor wall beyond has been demolished, as has the rear extension (location of the original skittles alley). No information has been provided regarding the interior of the building.

DISCUSSION The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s Principles of Selection for Listed Buildings (November 2018) sets out the criteria for listing buildings, which are their special architectural and historic interest. From 1850 to 1945, because of the greatly increased number of buildings erected and the much larger numbers that have survived, progressively greater selection is necessary.

Historic England’s Listing Selection Guide Commerce and Exchange Buildings (December 2017) provides further context for coffee houses.

Based on the information supplied and other available information, 136-138 London Road in Sheffield, the former Highfield Cocoa and Coffee House, is not recommended for listing for the following principal reasons:

Degree of Architectural interest:

* although designed by the well-regarded practice of M E Hadfield & Son and with good-quality workmanship apparent in its construction, the building's original external appearance has been considerably altered by the mid- to late C20 changes to the ground floor and its architectural integrity degraded; * though information on the interior is lacking, the subsequent change of use and reconfiguration of the main entrance doorway strongly suggest that alterations to the internal layout are likely; * the skittles alley to the rear of the main building, which formed one of the original facilities provided to patrons, has been demolished.

Degree of Historic interest:

* the funding by Frederick Thorpe Mappin is of some interest due to his standing as a leading Victorian businessman with strong philanthropic links to his hometown of Sheffield, but with the compromised architectural interest of the building it is not sufficient to recommend listing; * although said to be the first of its kind in Sheffield, coffee houses aimed at working-class patrons had been built previously in other industrial towns across Britain, and while the pretext for the construction of this building may have varied from those more directly linked to the temperance movement, the facilities were similar and the design was not markedly different; * whilst the building forms part of the C19 historic streetscape of London Road, it does not have a visual or associative group value with the listed library and former St Barnabas’ Church, now flats, on this long road.

CONCLUSION Alterations to the original cocoa and coffee house mean that it lacks the special architectural and historic interest to merit listing in a national context, however, its appearance and scale nevertheless contribute positively to the historic streetscape, while its original role is undoubtedly of interest to the local social history of Sheffield. This contribution has been previously acknowledged by the local planning authority in its recognition as a non-designated heritage asset, and as such, it benefits the character of the area.