It’s Sheffield’s newest private members club. Do we need it?

With additional reporting by Victoria Munro

It’s not every day that you first hear about a new nightlife spot on LinkedIn. But Oliver Keane isn’t most people. The Mulberry Club, he claims in a post on the business-networking site, will be continuing the legacy of Irish working men’s clubs. "They established something in the north that went deeper than anyone gave them credit for at the time[...] I didn't know any of that as a kid sitting in the Irish Club after Mass. I just knew it felt like somewhere. That's what we're trying to build. That is The Mulberry Club," he writes. I’m intrigued by this — I’m aware working men’s clubs were a good way of building community fast in industrial areas.

But when I head to the Mulberry Club’s website, instead of blue-collar workers propping up a bar, I see the ivory back of an evening-gown-clad brunette who wouldn’t look out of place on the cover of a Mills & Boons novel. She’s heading into a room draped in red curtains and other guests in formal wear – a long dress, a suit – are walking a little ahead of her. Scroll down and beneath the header "Cultivated for Conversation", I learn that "The Mulberry Club is a private members’ house taking shape in Sheffield’s Arts Quarter. Built on heritage, discretion and quality, the House is being prepared carefully ahead of its opening this Summer."

When I reach out to Keane, I learn that the website incarnation of the club is the correct one. He’s renovating a Grade-II listed former bank on George Street into an upmarket private members’ club. (While he’s referenced the tradition of Irish working men’s clubs, arguably he’s tapping into an inherently English tradition: that of Soho House and its imitators.) He tells me he’s spent the last three months doing up the former bank and that the Mulberry Club is keeping him up at night. This isn’t about nerves, but because he keeps experiencing random bursts of excitement, he insists. "I’m literally biting my fingernails off at the moment," he says. I’ve come to meet him in the hopes of figuring it out for myself. Is Keane’s optimism misplaced or is he right to be excited – will his club be the most enormous success?