Every year, a sleepy town becomes Sheffield-by-the-sea — why?

Dear readers – in the midst of an unusually hot summer, we asked Mollie to head to the beach to find out the answer to a question that’s been troubling her: why is Sidmouth, a sleepy town in Devon, known as “Sheffield by the sea”?

It’ll be a lovely, warm morning by the time you read this, so sit yourself in a sunny spot with a cool drink and let’s go on a summer holiday together.

Your Tribune briefing 🗞️

🏢 The owner of the former Debenhams department store on The Moor is in “advanced discussions” with potential occupiers, The Star report. The huge store has been closed since 2021 when the retail giant went bust. Since then, there have been numerous plans, including opening an “Ebay you can touch and feel” and even repurposing it as a health centre. NewRiver, the firm which also owns The Moor itself, bought the store in 2024 for just £1. They now say they are expecting the store to deliver “significant income and capital growth” as part of a “clear plan”, although the report is worryingly short of any concrete details.

🏗️ The first image which shows the full scale of Sheffield Forgemasters' new £210 million machine shop has been revealed. The vast 30,000 m² facility, which you might have noticed rising on a 16-acre site in Brightside, is part of a wider £1.3 billion investment programme and is due to be operational by the end of 2028. It will house some of the world’s largest five-axis vertical turning lathes and a new 13,000-tonne forging line, the largest in the UK.

💥 Sheffield council has officially submitted its bid to become City of Culture for 2029. In March, Sheffield was awarded a spot on the longlist, alongside Inverness-Highland, Middlesbrough, Portsmouth, Ipswich, Milton Keynes, Swindon, Wrexham and Blackpool (which isn't actually a city, if we were being pedantic). Sheffield and the other long-listed locales each received £60,000 to develop their bids — Sheffield’s (tagline: “From Grassroots to Global”) was submitted on Monday. The winner of the title, who will receive a £10m grant, will be announced later this year.

🌟 It’s the event of the century so far, and several places in Sheffield will get a great view. No, not another rice cake eating event. I’m talking about the solar eclipse, which will begin this evening shortly after 6pm. The Star has put together this handy list of the best places to see it, one of which is Park Hill (Dan is feeling pretty smug). Other options include Norfolk Park, Bole Hills and Parkwood Springs (please make sure you wear proper eye protection!). 

For a week each year, a sleepy town becomes Sheffield-by-the-sea — why?

By Mollie Simpson

It’s the first week of August when I visit “Sheffield by the sea” — or, to use the name you’d find on a map, the town of Sidmouth in Devon. The pebbled beach is teeming with young families eating ice cream, casting long shadows on the waves. The air is still sweltering, but there’s a cool breeze that reminds me autumn is on its way. In the distance, I can hear the sound of a cellist rehearsing, barely perceptible over the percussion accompaniment of the tide.

My tour guide is Philip Long, a former Sheffield Hallam lecturer, who reached out about a year ago to congratulate me on my move to Sheffield (off the sea). We bonded over having made similar journeys in opposite directions – I grew up in the seaside town of Charmouth, whereas Philip spent his formative years up here before retiring to Sidmouth. I was intrigued to hear that, for one week every August, it’s like he never left. Though Sidmouth is a four and a half hour drive from Sheffield (or five hours by public transport), a deluge of Steel citizens washes up in his sleepy new home each year, which is how it acquired its nickname. I promised myself that, when August next rolled around, I’d be among them. 

On the face of it, there’s a simple explanation for this invasion. Every year since 1955, the first week of August means it’s time for the Sidmouth Folk Festival, when hundreds of musicians descend on the town’s gardens, churches, halls and any space left over to do what they do best. It is the UK’s longest running folk festival; every morning and afternoon is filled with music, dance processions, Ceilidh and Morris dancing workshops, folk storytelling and puppet shows. What’s less clear is why — given artists come from a constellation of different countries, cities, towns and villages — the programme always skews more Sheffield than anywhere else. Tash Daly, the festival’s latest co-director and artistic director, is fairly confident that’s been the case since the 1960s.

To prepare for my trip to the coast, I watched a 2023 documentary on the festival, A Small Quiet English Town, which heavily features two previous programmers: Bill Rutter and John Dowell. As a result, I’m half-expecting Tash to be as formidable and bolshy as this duo, although she’s almost the polar opposite, quiet and warm. According to local history, 1966 was one of the most notoriously rowdy years in the festival’s history — much of the raucousness was allegedly due to a dozen attendees from Sheffield’s Barley Mow Folk Club — and Bill, unwilling to brook such frivolity, turned up at the campsite in his dressing gown one night to reprimand people for singing too loudly. In the documentary, John admits that he and Bill clashed frequently after John took the reins in 1979. “I spent four years arguing with him, we’d shout at each other from our own offices,” he said. 

The first stop on my personal tour of the festival with Philip is Blackmore Gardens, where the children’s events take place, and immediately I spot a familiar face. Emma Hardy, a violin-maker with a workshop at Portland Works, is sitting on a camping chair wearing oversized linen, displaying some of the instruments she’s hand-crafted from Peak District wood. Though she’s aware that Sheffield dominates the festival, she has no theories on why, although she helpfully writes down a list of people who might know more.