The Former Ball Inn

The Former Ball Inn is an early 19th-century shop and store, originally a public house, with alterations made in the mid-19th century and the 20th century. The building is constructed of rendered and painted brickwork, featuring brick ridge stacks and a Welsh slate roof. Situated on a street corner, it has entrances at the angle of two ranges.

The front (south) elevation is two storeys and two bays wide. To the right is an angled doorway with a plain door and a blocked rectangular overlight. Flanking this doorway are plain pilasters with console brackets at their heads, supporting a fascia that extends to form a triangular canopy over the door opening. To the left of the doorway is a plain shop window, formerly a bar, with similar pilasters, console brackets, and a plain fascia. Further left is a second doorway with moulded pilasters, a lintel with a moulded cornice, and a plain door with a rectangular overlight. A plain sash window without glazing bars is to the left of this doorway. Two first-floor sash windows, each with two panes over two, are present above the ground floor elements, and a street lamp hangs from a wall-mounted bracket above the corner doorway. The return elevation to Ball Street features blocked ground-floor openings and two altered first-floor openings. The rear elevations are of early 19th-century red brick, with blocked upper-floor openings having flat soldier arch heads. One opening to the Ball Street range retains a three-light glazing bar casement.

The interior plan has been modified, but the room compartments of the former public house remain. Some panelled and plain boarded doors remain, alongside a stick baluster staircase with a curved handrail. A former bar has a moulded plaster cornice carried across the room on an exposed spine beam with run-out stops. A blocked tall stair window has an architrave surround. A single small cast-iron hearth surround survives at ground floor level. The roof structure includes single purlins and a king-post truss with angled struts.

The building is an increasingly rare survival of a small corner public house at the heart of an historic manufacturing district in Sheffield. These public houses were characteristically located close to steel and tool works, sometimes attached to them as in this instance. It contributes to the setting of Cornish Place and the Brooklyn Works, forming a group with those buildings.