One much-loved Sheffield pub which does things a little differently to most is celebrating after 10 years of community ownership.

And as generations of people move away from spending their evenings in their local, boozers that honour tradition and foster community can be hard to come by.

The Gardeners Rest in Neepsend is exactly the place to go if you want to enjoy a quiet pint in traditional settings, without the distractions of fruit machines, a juke box or even Sky TV, thanks that seem normal these days in most watering holes.

It’s the kind of pub where everyone seems to know each other and conversations flow. Their undoubted success is built on exactly what they set out for; a community.

This month, they celebrate their 10th anniversary of community ownership. They are inviting the public on Saturday, September 26 to join them for a day of live music, Morris dancers, a BBQ and a chance to meet the directors.

Andy Chaplain, secretary of the board of The Gardeners Rest community society, reflected on the last decade, and shared how it all began.

He said: “It’s been a pub for a long time. Its owners, up until about 2016, decided they were going to retire, and at that point we were looking for an alternative just to sell it to a chain.

“So we looked at local people that had come into the pub to see whether they’d be interested in doing a community buyout. That started in 2016 and it took a year to actually get a share offer up and running.”

After what would have seen the site close a group of regulars formed the Gardeners Rest Community Society (GRCS) to save their beloved pub.

The group invited others to invest through a share offer. A massive 382 people invested, resulting in £237,600 being raised, smashing their initial target of £100,000.

With additional support from the Plunkett Foundation and Key Fund, the society was able to successfully purchase the pub, and they now have over 420 investors.

These investors elect the management board and have a say in how the pub develops as a community enterprise.

So it’s clear that community is at the heart of everything they do, helping the space become a home for various groups across the city.

Lawrence Whyte, chairman of the board at The Gardeners Rest, explains why he thinks the pub is so special.

He said: “I think what’s special is we try to balance being a successful commercial organisation with offering our facilities to any community groups that would wish to use them for free, so that part of our profit-making goes back into supporting the activities of various groups.

“We’ve got a number of musical groups, some writing groups, creative arts groups, poetry groups, as well as helping some individuals get back into employment.”

They also have a relationship with Freeman college, a specialist college in Sheffield for 16 to 25-year-olds with special educational needs, and provide training and supervision in hospitality.

Lawrence added: “I think the uniqueness of it is that we include the groups into our decision-making. So some of them are shareholders, but we try to include all the groups in our plans, our aspirations, and the way in which the pub is run.”

Adding to its uniqueness, Andy mentioned the pub being “city-based” and how it changes the way they define community.

He said: “I think there are a lot of community-owned pubs these days around the country. The majority of them tend to be in villages where the pubs were about to shut and the village sort of wanted to keep it open. We’re one of the few that are a city-based pub, and our sort of definition of community in that case is probably different.

“In our case, it’s based around customers that were here in the first place, and a whole range of other groups now that have come in and used the facility. So it’s a different idea of community.”

As Kelham Island currently undergoes development, the area is set to see more homes being built, which could see a potential influx of new customers for The Gardeners Rest.

Interestingly, the board conducted a survey around two years ago about their customer base, and actually found that the majority of their customers “don’t live locally”.

Lawrence said: “They are making an effort to come here because they support how the pub is. It’s not as it used to be where you go down a couple of doors into your local pub, people are coming here to experience that local feeling because that’s what they want and that’s what we invested in to retain.”

For him, seeing the pub “buzzing with activity” on a Monday night is what he loves about the place.

He said: “That kind of really gets my heart going, to come in on what would normally be a very quiet night and see the place full and people doing what they want to do in a safe environment.”

Both Andy and Lawrence are proud of the pubs traditional values; the place has no Sky TV, no fruit machines, no jukebox, people are free to “enjoy a quiet drink in a traditional kind of setting”.

Despite their success, they have experienced various challenges during their 10 years. The Covid pandemic was notably seen as their “biggest difficulty” as they had to close for several periods.

Andy said: “Having said that, the fact that we were a community-based pub meant that we had a group of people that we were in contact with online and we could actually take orders and go out and make deliveries to them. Then when restrictions changed, people actually came and queued up outside to get takeaways and came partly to talk to each other.”

So even in the countries darkest days, The Gardeners Rest was still dedicated to serving the community and making a difference to people’s days.

After 10 years of community ownership, the pub will celebrate on September 26 and outline their plans for its growth and development.

Lawrence revealed they will be launching a share offer, where people can become a shareholder for as little as £50. This is to help fund their plans to build a lift in the building to improve accessibility.

He shared what this anniversary means to him, that it is a “measure of success” for them, adding: “You read a lot in the press about the pressure on hospitality, the pressure on pubs, more and more pubs closing. We’ve managed to remain commercially successful.

“We’re growing, we’re aspirational. The 10 years I think is a point of being able to say that we’ve survived what we originally intended to become and now is the opportunity to grow.”