Chesterfield Hotel

The Chesterfield Hotel

Chesterfield Hotel Thanks to Chesterfield Museum

The Chesterfield Hotel was built and opened in 1876–7, a few years after the Midland Railway rebuilt its station at Chesterfield on its present site, a short distance to the north of the first station of 1840.
The hotel stood at the foot of Corporation Street, which was itself laid out by the Borough Council in the early 1870s as a more impressive approach to the station than the original road, part of which survives as Station Back Lane.
The hotel, which is built of brick with pitched slate roofs on a quadrangular plan around a central courtyard, was extended three times.
Two more or less matching wings were built at either end of the original block, one on Corporation Street and the other on Malkin Street.
The last extension was much less satisfactory, extended in brick which did not match that of the earlier phases, with windows that were not the same size or shape, and in part a flat roof.
The setting of the hotel was not improved by the decision to sever Corporation Street as a motor road when the Inner Relief Road was built, separating it from the other commercial buildings higher up the street, and leaving it in not very splendid isolation, flanked by minor roads on three sides and the Inner Relief Road on the fourth.
Known for most of its life as the Station Hotel, it was renamed the Chesterfield Hotel in the 1980s, presumably because the older name had rather down-at-heel connotations, although the later name was essentially meaningless.
The Station Hotel set out from the start to be Chesterfield’s leading hotel. For much of the twentieth century it was one of Mansfield Brewery’s leading residential houses and was featured a good deal in the company’s advertising.
It was a three star hotel, whereas its nearest rival, the Hotel Portland of 1899, also a railway hotel, was Chesterfield’s two star hotel.
The Chesterfield Hotel closed down in 2015 due to the previous company that owned it going bust. However, according to Matthew Lee on the Venturing Off Limits' Facebook page It wasn't closed because the company went bankrupt, it was closed because of Chesterfield Borough Council, who actually forced it's closure in 2015. The site was bought up by a conglomerate, who then sold it on and hid the sale, to hide the fact that several previous Cllrs of Chesterfield, had their hands in purchasing the land and making large amounts of money from it being closed, left to go derelict, pulled it down at a cheaper cost than repairing it, all just for the land.
Operating for 138 years made it one of chesterfields longest operating businesses.
Over the years, it was a venue for thousands of occasions, including weddings, birthday celebrations and Christmas parties and was a major employer.
Prestige bought the hotel for £900,000 in April 2017 and is understood to have spent up to £300,000 on repair and refurbishment work.
Sadly refurbishment cost's are way too high for the company and abandoned the idea of doing it up.
It was being marketed as a former 73 bedroom hotel with “extensive function and leisure facilities” including a swimming pool and gym, large car park and “development potential” with a guide price of £1.25 million.
Sadly there was no takers and it has now been demolished, to erect two new buildings on the site.
According to the application form, the two buildings would primarily be used as an office and a hotel.
Possible further uses to be considered include residential flats, retail, event space and food and drink establishments.