Another guest post from Carl Lee... this one should perhaps have been posted later in the year... but let's put it here now...
Carols in North Sheffield Pubs
In the early 1980s I lived in Malin Bridge, a suburb of Sheffield on its north-eastern border. It is where the Rivelin and Loxley valleys merge before joining the Upper Don in Hillsborough. I was a student at Sheffield City Polytechnic, and a southerner. Malin Bridge was very much working class Yorkshire.
Many of the early water-wheels that powered the early metal works were found on the rivers Loxley and Rivelin.
One December evening we went into our local pub, The Yew Tree, and it was abuzz with noise, singing, folk singing Christmas songs, carols maybe, whatever, it was it was not to our taste, we had a pint in the snug and left. That was my first glimpse into the centuries-old tradition in north Sheffield of singing folk carols in pubs in weeks leading up to Christmas.
In Sheffield this is as traditional as getting your best cutlery out on Christmas Day and it is a very local 'local'.
Not in the south or east of the city, maybe drifting into the Derbyshire Peak District and north towards Stocksbridge, but basically the villages and suburbs abutting Hillsborough and stretching out along the River Rivelin, Loxley and Upper Don.
Tradition can sometimes be a sticky concept. Much of what is now considered traditional about a British Christmas has a history no longer than two centuries, often far less, and has often been drawn from older, and sometimes non- Christian, mid-winter festivities. In 1843, when Charles Dickens published his now perennial backbone of British Christmas tradition ‘A Christmas Carol’, an appetite for re-evaluation and reinvention of old traditions was afoot in British society. It was drawing on old folk traditions and as cultural critic John Ruskin sniffed at the time it was an re-imagining of Christmas as “mistletoe and pudding”.
Today carols are an intrinsic part of Christmas, the most famous of which are learnt by rote from an early age in school if not in the home. Although it should be noted that in the 18th century ‘While shepherds watched their flocks’ was the only Christmas hymn permitted to be sung in Anglican churches. All other carols were considered too secular.
Image: not the Yew Tree pub in Malin Bridge, but Ely Cathedral - Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license on Flickr.
Carol services are therefore a relatively recent addition to British Christmas tradition with the first formal carol service said to be have been held at Truro Cathedral in 1880.
Today whether Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu or atheist, any schoolchild in Britain who doesn’t at least know the words of ‘Good King Wenceslas’ or ‘Away in A Manger’ has either has had a terrible attendance record at school or hasn’t paid any attention whatsoever. These ubiquitous carols are the Church’s canon, which was developed in late Victorian times but the Sheffield carols pre-date that period by centuries.
These are the carols of the English folk tradition that are sung in pubs rather than places of worship. From mid November to the end of December across a number of pubs in the north west suburbs and villages of Sheffield, Bradfield, Worrall, Lodge Moor, Oughtibridge, Ecclesfield, Dungworth and perhaps most famously Stannington folk gather together to sing folk carols to the accompaniment of whatever instruments are bought to the evening; fiddles are particularly favoured.
Christmas carols in the Holly Bush pub Stannington, Sheffield - 'Hail Smiling Morn'
In recent years a resurgence of this tradition has seen it drift further into the city of Sheffield with even two of my local boozers in Nether Edge, coming to the party.
Local media now proclaims that this daily, multi-pub public singing extravaganza is what a ‘Sheffield’ Christmas is about.
Guides are printed and ethno-musicologists come from elsewhere to sup Bradfield Farmers Blonde and soak in some folk authenticity, although some might grumble about local brass bands sometimes getting in on the act, as this was not how it was 'back in the day'.
If this was in Andalucía or Sicily, Sunday magazines would extol its virtues on the travel pages but it takes place on the dark, often wet and windy, evenings of terraces and villages that stretch from Sheffield into the south Pennine hills, and pretty much nowhere else in the UK - not quite like this in any case.
The leading academic expert on this is Professor Emeritus Ian Russell whose 1977 doctorate was based on the singing traditions of West Sheffield.
Professor Russell observes that “carolling in pubs was, and is, primarily festive, seasonal, unrestrained emphasising sociability and conviviality”. The songs sung are folk songs and adaptions of carols within the existing cannon, most folk in the UK would not recognise many, they are essentially local to the tradition and have been passed down across generations. Variations occur between villages, and even between pubs in the same village.
Such hyper-localised musical traditions are not unique to Sheffield, the UK, Europe or anywhere but they are increasingly assailed by mass media homogenisation and at Christmas this appears particularly so, especially musically with Mariah Carey, Slade and George Michael leading the corporate charge in Britain.
Yet a fiddle or two, a beer of two and some, often out of tune, hearty singing with your neighbours and friends seems as Sheffield as it gets, until somebody mentions football, but that’s for Boxing Day.
“We singers make bold, as in days of old,
To celebrate Christmas and bring good cheer;
Glad tidings we bring of Messiah, our King,
So we wish you a merry Christmas”.
Sources:
2025 listing of carols in pubs in and around Sheffield
Hidden Carols: A Christmas Singing Tradition in the English Pennines.
There is also a tradition spreading into the Peak District and the Hope Valley.
One carol is called 'Stannington'
Carl Lee is retired but was a lecturer at The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, taught A level Geography for 20 years at Sheffield College, is the author of five books about geography and has a PhD in economic geography. He has been nuts about music since buying his first single in 1973: 10cc’s 'Rubber Bullets' if you were wondering.
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