Stephenson Memorial Hall History
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A venue is born
(To be updated) As its name suggests, the Stephenson Memorial Hall commemorates the town’s connection to ‘Father of the Railways’ George Stephenson. Situated on the corner of Corporation Street and St Mary’s Gate, it was intended to be used for adult education but has had multiple civic and cultural uses over the years.
The Hall project was an initiative of two local societies, the Chesterfield Institute of Engineers and the Chesterfield and Derbyshire Institute of Mining, Civil and Mechanical Engineers. The building housed classrooms for art and science, a public hall, lecture hall and a library.
The foundation stone for the Stephenson Memorial Hall was laid in October 1877 by the Marquis of Hartington and was officially opened in July 1879 by the Duke of Devonshire, celebrated by a banquet and a grand concert in the hall.
Funding the building
The cost of the scheme to build a hall (£13,735) was reliant on public donations and fundraisers. Many prominent local people and companies gave money; the Duke of Devonshire gave £500, and the Stanton Coal and Iron Co. gave £250. This was not enough, however, and the trustees could not pay off the debt. The Chesterfield Corporation (the Council) bought the Hall in 1889 for £4,000.
Changing uses
The building of the Stephenson Memorial enabled the Corporation to provide a free library for the town. The library opened in November 1880, a year after the rest of the building’s facilities, and books included the works of Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott and Charlotte Brontë.
After the Stephenson Memorial Hall came into council ownership in 1889, land was acquired at the east end of the building to enlarge the public hall and adapt it as a theatre. It opened in 1898 with a new stage and dressing rooms and became known as the Corporation Theatre, hosting a variety of plays, concerts and local amateur productions. Before its extension in 1898, the public hall in the Stephenson Memorial Hall only had a shallow stage and small changing rooms, with the new addition the capacity was increased to over 1,100.
The west side of the building also underwent changes. By 1902 the science and art classes were no longer running. As a result, in 1905 the ground floor was adapted for use as a council chamber, committee rooms and Mayor’s parlour while the library was moved to the first floor. Previously, council meetings had been held at the municipal hall on the corner of Beetwell Street and South Street, but the facilities were shared with the police and magistrates’ courts, which was not ideal.
The library expansion
Chesterfield’s first free public library opened its doors in the Stephenson Memorial Hall in November 1880. In 1938, the opening of the new town hall enabled the library to expand and occupy the entire west end of the building, and it continued to do so until 1985 when a new library was opened on Beetwell Street.
When the new town hall was built in 1938, it was initially suggested that the old council chamber and committee rooms should be used as the town’s courthouse. In the end however, it was decided that the library should be expanded. The reference library and lending library were transferred to the ground floor, while an exhibition and lecture room were on the first floor. Alterations were completed in September 1939 but there was no official opening due to the onset of the Second World War.
The age of movies
After the lease of the theatre to a cinema company in 1926, the venue mainly showed films. During the silent movie era, the music was provided by an orchestra, but in 1931 a sound system was installed launching a new era of entertainment. The cinema lease expired in 1948 and in 1949 this part of the building became a theatre once more, the Civic Theatre.
Britain’s first civic theatre
After the cinema lease ran out in 1948, the venue became the country’s first ever civic theatre. There was tremendous excitement in the town when the new Civic Theatre had its opening night on 21st February 1949.
Llewellyn Rees, the then Drama Director of the Arts Council of Great Britain said, "Chesterfield’s new Civic Theatre is an example to the rest of the country." The opening ceremony was performed by famous British screen actress Kathleen Harrison, followed by the first performance of the farce ‘See How They Run’ by Philip King.
Within five years, the Civic Theatre had presented more than 200 different plays, and was an important Repertory Theatre, putting on new plays every week. Many well-known performers appeared there, including Dame Penelope Keith, David Quilter, Nigel Davenport, David McCallum, Diana Rigg – in her professional debut – Edward Fox and Donald Sutherland.
Chesterfield’s civic theatre was renamed the Pomegranate Theatre, which celebrated its 70th birthday in 2019 with a seven-week play season and an exhibition presented at the Chesterfield Museum, in collaboration with the Chesterfield Theatre Friends.
Chesterfield Museum
A museum for Chesterfield was first looked at seriously in the 1920s but was postponed ‘until a more opportune time.’
By the late 1980s, plans for a museum in Chesterfield were finally underway and in May 1994, after many years of planning and anticipation, Chesterfield finally opened its town museum at the Stephenson Memorial Hall.
The museum was opened on 12 May 1994 by Henry Sandon of Antiques Roadshow fame. By that October, the museum had clocked up its 10,000th visitor. By March 2018, over 600,000 visitors had been through the museum’s doors.
