Last music hall in Sheffield

[GrinderBloke]

I remember listening to radio Sheffield, probably 20 or more years ago and RR visited the last surviving music hall in Sheffield...

 

If I remember correctly it was a bit of a mess, very little of the roof remained, pigeons had taken over, but the basic shell was in place. The person guiding RR was trying to save the building, I suspect this venture failed

 

I seem to recall it was somewhere around the West Bar / Scotland Street area, can anyone tell me more.

 

Grinder

[tsavo]

If I remember rightly it was on the LHS just past the fire station museum heading towards Infirmary Rd. You could still see some sort of decorative moulding above the shops. Don't know if it's still there though.

[peterw]

The theatre you’re looking for was Grand Music Hall at West Bar, which in 1896 was standing empty. It had been forced to close after the Moss Empire Palace had opened in Sheffield. An entrepreneur from Northampton, Frank MacNaughten, took it over and emplyed Fred Baugh as house manager and Sidney Arthur as booker.

 

MacNaughten re-opened the 'Grand Theatre and Music Hall' as he billed the place, at Bank Holiday, 1896, on the then almost unknown 'Two Houses a Night' system. He also floated a company in 1897 with a capital of £10,000 to build the Alhambra Theatre in Attercliffe (later the Palace). One of the directors was Fred Lawton, of a firm of solicitors, Hardy, Lawton and Company, of Sheffied.

 

The Alhambra opened on the 3rd January, 1898 and continued until 1907 when it was sold to T. Allan Edwards of Derby, who changed its name to the Palace. It was operated as a music hall until 1913 then changed to a cinema and later back to a music-hall.