Highfield Cocoa and Coffee House
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
.jpg)
The Highfield Cocoa and Coffee House is a building in Sheffield, England. It was built in 1877 by Frederick Thorpe Mappin, a local businessman, and was intended to provide non-alcoholic entertainment to the working classes. It featured a coffee, tea and cocoa bar, a library, billiards room and skittle alley. The Cocoa and Coffee House closed in 1908 and the building was used to house a confectioner's shop. In the 1950s the structure was acquired by the shopfitters George Barlow & Sons and used as a showroom. The firm installed seven Modernist concrete friezes to the façade in 1967. The firm, which had since become Keetons Property, sought to demolish the building in 2022 to construct a block of flats. The demolition was objected to by Hallamshire Historic Buildings (HHB) and the Victorian Society.
The Highfield Cocoa and Coffee House is located at 136 London Road, Sheffield.[1] It was built in 1877 by Frederick Thorpe Mappin, a businessman with the family firms Mappin Brothers and Mappin & Webb, who later became a member of parliament.[2] Mappin intended the building to provide entertainment to the working classes, in a similar manner to that provided by gentlemen's clubs to the upper classes.[2] Although Mappin was not a teetotaller he established the Cocoa and Coffee House as a non-alcoholic venue, as an alternative to public houses. The building was the first of its type in the city, following experiments with similar establishments in Liverpool and London as part of the temperance movement.[1][3] Mappin had no previous involvement with the movement and seems to have built the Cocoa and Coffee House at the suggestion of a Reverend Lamb of St Mary's Church, Bramall Lane, who had read of the Liverpool experiment.[4]
The building was designed by M. E. Hadfield & Son and cost £4,500 to construct.[2] The ground floor was laid out as a single large room with tables for the consumption of beverages. The upper floor, reached by a wide staircase, contained a reading room, library and billiards room. A steward's house sat to the rear and, between the two structures and covered by a glass roof, was a skittle alley.[4] The exterior features arch windows and terracotta detailing.[4]
The building was sited to attract workers from the nearby Portland Works and Stag Works. The building was open from 5 am to 11 pm, catering for the breakfast and lunchtime trade as well as evening entertainment.[1] Cocoa, coffee and tea were sold at a penny a pint and bread and butter was also available (though patrons could also bring in their own food). The billiards tables, chess sets and card decks could be hired though gambling was strictly prohibited.[1][4] The Cocoa and Coffee House was run on a commercial basis, with profits being returned to Mappin.[1] It was initially very popular, reporting 500 customers attending for breakfast and 600 for teatime in 1879.[4] Cocoa houses quickly lost market share to the newly popular cafés and Highfield Cocoa and Coffee House closed in 1908.[1]
