It's Enough to Make You Spit!

It's been a while since the previous post. I'm putting it down to having been on cat-sitting duties in Andalucia for three weeks and then returning to face ten appointments at the GP or hospital in the space of nine days. There just hasn't been the time or, to be honest, the inclination, to do much census crawling or directory delving, so here's a post without any.

I'm actually typing this whilst sitting in limbo waiting for a call from the hospital, which will happen "sometime on Monday". I missed their previous attempt to contact me last week when I failed to extract my mobile, which was trapped behind three zip fasteners, whilst on a train to Nottingham to investigate some of that city's still existing boozers in the company of erstwhile colleague, Eric. This was one of our regular quarterly trips of exploration which had previously seen us visit the likes of Gorleston and, more recently, Hull.

Our first port of call was the Vat and Fiddle, Castle Rock Brewery's brewery tap, which is situated conveniently close to the station, where we solved the war in Gaza...

Beating Trump to the solution at the Vat and Fiddle.

...before moving on to tackle climate change at the King Billy.

Anyhow, I digress. It was on one of the early morning trips to the hospital that Malcolm, my trusty satnav, informed me that he'd found a route that was fourteen minutes quicker than sitting in Chesterfield's rush hour traffic would be, so I duly followed his suggestion. His alternative route took me past this building, which has obviously been put to an alternative use.

I wonder what this building used to be. © Google 2025

The Spital Hotel was built on Spital Lane in the 1920s for the Chesterfield Brewery Company, which was acquired in 1934 by the Mansfield Brewery Company. This would explain how, in 2014, it was displaying Marston's signage, with Marston's owners, Wolverhampton & Dudley, having taken over Mansfield in 1999.

"The Spital" in Spital, Chesterfield. © Neal Theasby 2014

The Spital closed in October 2015 and, as we can see from Mr. Google's image, was converted into a Coop convenience store.

Having passed the Spital, I continued on my way to the hospital where, just as I was parking, I received a text informing me that my appointment had been cancelled. That, just like Donald Trump beating Eric and me to the draw in Gaza, is enough to make me want to spit.

Neil Theasby's image is copyright and is reused under this licence.

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