Sheffield Irish Dance Society celebrated St Patrick’s Day with a performance crawl across the city’s Irish pubs and bars, joining the citywide celebrations for the Irish festival.
The society is made up of students at Sheffield universities. Erin Pauley, the society president, said: ‘It’s a bit of the culture that I’ve got to take over from home, and it’s just a nice way to stay active and make lots of friends here.
‘It’s the best day of the year, I’m so excited. And my friends have flown over from Belfast to celebrate with us, so that’ll be really cool’.
The group isn’t exclusive to people with Irish heritage, it welcomes those from ‘all walks of life, ethnicities and nationalities’. Miss Pauley described the society as ‘close-knit’, and currently has around 20 members, but welcomes anyone to join.
The crawl started at The Irish on Ecclesall Road and continued onto West Street, with performances at The Cavendish, The Dog and Partridge, The Grapes and Fagans.
The Irish on Ecclesall Road was the group’s first stop, and Sheffield’s newest Irish pub, opening it’s doors in October 2025.
‘We’ve got a couple of Irish pubs in the northwest, one in Preston and one in Lancaster, and we’re originally from this area so we thought you know what? Lets do something in our hometown,’ said owner Rob Smith.
“We’re hoping there’s lots of Guinness flowing, lots of craic and lots of good times. It’s one of the biggest days of the year, it’s our first one here in Sheffield so we’re really looking forward to it.’’
Another of the group’s venues, The Dog and Partridge, is one of Sheffield’s most renowned Irish pubs and was named in Guinness’ Harp Guide as one of the 35 best pubs in Britain.
Conor McGowan, the pub’s landlord, said: ‘It’s just a really busy day, and everybody with every sort of Irish connection they could think of comes out, and has a good old celebration, lots of music and dancing, and drinking obviously.
‘We’ve got somewhere around the region of 50 kegs of Guinness in. We sell Murphy’s and Beamish as well, so the three Irish stouts. They’ll all be selling well no doubt.’
The traditional Irish dancing brought Sheffield a taste of culture from over 200 miles away, with students and locals coming out to drink and celebrate throughout the day. Sláinte!