Two pubs in Unstone, Derbyshire, March 2020

HughieD · Jun 18, 2020

Explored prior to lockdown. Didn’t bother reporting as it didn’t amount to that much, but in the absence of new explores knocked together a report.

Unstone is located approximately 13 miles to the South of Sheffield and approximately 4.5 miles to the north of Chesterfield

1. The Old Horse and Jockey

This detached house dating back to the 18th/19th Century was previously a licensed public house. It’s been empty for some time and is in a real state. Built partly of stone and partly of brick and having part blue slate roof and part interlocking tiled roof, it sold at auction recently for £300,000 but nothing seems to have happened to it since. Has the potential to be converted into apartments and on the estate agent’s site there are drawings to demonstrate how it could be converted into four x 1-bed apartments and two x 2-bed apartments. Apparently, it is now sold but there doesn’t seem to be much going on with any redevelopment plans currently.

In terms of derp pubs, it doesn’t get much more derpy than this. The roof is long since gone and the water ingress has made this place soggy and mouldy. Didn’t hang around to long in this place.

Even from the outside this place looks derpy:

Unstone pub 01 by HughieDW, on Flickr

Round the back we go:

Unstone pub 02 by HughieDW, on Flickr

Pink skateboard anyone?

Unstone pub 03 by HughieDW, on Flickr

Kitchen requires modernisation:

Unstone pub 04 by HughieDW, on Flickr

And the lounge a bit of redecorating:

Unstone pub 05 by HughieDW, on Flickr
And the chimney sweeping:

Unstone pub 06 by HughieDW, on Flickr

2. The Fleur De Lys

Just up the road, towards Chesterfield on the opposite side of the road, is this ex-Mansfield’s pub. It has been left empty for a much shorter time and most likely closed circa 2016, as it was on the market in February 2017. It came with planning Consent granted in December 2016 for the demolition of the existing public house and erection of seven dwellings.

In some ways this is a sadder loss to the pub-going community as it was clearly a relatively popular pub and could have been saved. However once closed the metal thieves clearly descended on the place pretty quickly given the ripped-up floorboards and radiators lying around. A shame as the punter who reviewed it for Google back in 2010 and gave it four stars out of five clearly appreciated it:

“Menu was pretty much what you'd expect in the pub. You have to order food from the bar so when up but there was no one there, but after shouting hello a fella came round to take our order. Very friendly and sorted it out, had a bit of a joke and then went back round corner.

Fella came round to tell us that they were out of cottage pie, but they would happily sub that for a steak pie at no extra charge which was good news as we had just ordered 2 for £5.95 and the steak pie alone was £5.25. Food turned up about 10 mins later, hot, and good chips, excellent pie, and ok curry. All-in-all, a good service, and decent food, easy parking and relaxed atmosphere.”