The Leadmill

The Leadmill was a live music venue and nightclub on Leadmill Road, on the south-eastern edge of Sheffield city centre. Housed in a former flour mill, it was widely described as the longest-running live music venue and nightclub in the city, hosting live gigs, club nights, comedy, theatre, record fairs, cabaret and drag over more than four decades.

The building had an earlier musical life in the 1960s as the Esquire Club, where acts including The Who, Jimi Hendrix and The Small Faces reportedly played on a stage made from two grand pianos with the legs sawn off, with gigs there promoted by a young Peter Stringfellow. The Leadmill itself opened in May 1980 as a not-for-profit community arts space, created by volunteers against the backdrop of Thatcherism and mass youth unemployment in Sheffield, and it briefly closed after only four months when it was initially refused an alcohol licence. Early programming included a 1982 pantomime directed by Jarvis Cocker, the Festival Against Unemployment the same year, and regular Sunday 'Jazz For Lunch' sessions through the 1980s. In 1988 the venue was visited by Prince Charles, who praised its restoration and multi-purpose use as theatre, live venue, training centre, restaurant, bar and nightclub.

Musically, the Leadmill is remembered both for guitar bands and for dance culture. Early-career shows came from Pulp, Arctic Monkeys and Richard Hawley among many others, with Arctic Monkeys selling the venue out faster than any other band in 2005. On the clubbing side, in the 1990s it served as the temporary Sheffield home of the trance-associated Gatecrasher brand before that moved to its own dedicated venue, after which the Leadmill launched its own long-running house night, RISE.

The venue underwent refurbishment in 2017, including a new dancefloor and mezzanine, and continued as a focal point of Sheffield's grassroots music and clubbing scene into the 2020s. From 2022 it faced a lengthy eviction dispute with its freeholder, Electric Group, which it ultimately lost; the Leadmill closed its doors for the final time on 27 June 2025 after 45 years. Its former operators have since been running events at other venues around Sheffield under the Leadmill name while seeking a new permanent home, while Electric Group has redeveloped the original building as a new venue.