Chesterfield and District Civic Society’s second plaque to be unveiled in July marks the Portland Hotel and the adjacent, but 1973 demolished, Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway Station.

The latest in the society’s blue plaque series was unveiled on 23 July by Wetherspoon’s area manager Joe Argyle, with the society’s chairman Howard Borrell.

The plaque has been sponsored by East Midlands Railway Community Fund and is sited by kind permission of Wetherspoons. Our thanks to former civic society chairman Philip Riden for sourcing this plaque and for the research on the Market Place railway station’s architect – the first time that Cole Alfred Adams has been identified as such.

The plaque reads ‘Portland Hotel Opened 1899. Architect James Ragg Wigfull (1864-1936). To the right of this plaque stood the Chesterfield Market Place station of the Lancashire, Derbyshire & East Coast Railway. Architect Cole Alfred Adams (1844-1909). Opened 1897. Closed 1951. Demolished 1973.’ It is situated on the New Square frontage of the popular hotel.

The Portland Hotel – brief historical details

The Portland Hotel, on which the first plaque is fixed, was finally opened in 1899. It replaced, over two phases, the Bird in Hand and White Horse public houses. Built by William Stones brewery, it was designed to serve passengers in the adjacent Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway station. Its name comes from the Duke of Portland due to the new railway line travelling over land owned by the duke. Its architect James Ragg Wigfull (1864-1936), was based in Sheffield and did other work for the brewery. In 1925 the former Brampton Brewery Company purchased the premises. Latterly it became owned by Wetherspoons who reopened it after an extensive refurbishment in 2001.

The Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway (LDECR) – historical summary

The ‘Market Place station’ of the LDECR was a terminus on a line designed to, but which never reached, Lancashire nor the east coast. It was designed by Cole Alfred Adams. The railway’s construction was inaugurated in 1892 by a ceremonial cutting of the first sod by Mrs  Arkwright of Sutton Scarsdale Hall on the adjacent Maynard’s Meadows. The line, in its truncated form, opened in 1897. It only ever went as far as a junction near to Lincoln.

The LDECR was taken over by the Great Central Railway in 1907 and formed part of the London and North Eastern Railway from 1923. At the 1948 railway nationalisation it became part of the Eastern Region of British Railways. Always having a sparse passenger service, the station closed to passengers in 1951. Used as a decorating and carpet warehouse, it was sadly demolished in 1973. Perhaps most famously, for local people who remember it, the adjacent West Bars goods yard was used as a venue for a very successful railway element of the 1948 death of George Stephenson centenary celebrations in 1948.

The station was three-storey, faced the street, with two wings flanking the platforms behind. Of a loosely Dutch baroque style, it was built in red brick with stone dressings and slate roofs. The upper floors originally comprised the company’s offices.

Cole Alfred Adams (1844-1909) – brief biography

Research in The National Archives at Kew has discovered that the architect to stations on the LDECR can safely be attributed to Cole Alfred Adams. A largely unknown figure, he was born in 1844 and was certainly working in Bournemouth for part of the 1870s.  He then appears in a number of towns, latterly in London and is associated with a number of building designs. He died in 1909. Adam’s work for the LDECR fell into the last phase of his career, when he had an office in London’s Victoria. He became related by marriage to the railway company’s solicitor, Dixon Henry Davies, who lived in Ashgate. This may well be how he came to be the principal architect for the LDECR – though he was never formally appointed as such.

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For information about Cole Alfred Adams visit the Derbyshire Victoria County History Trust’s blog here.

There’s also a brief history of Chesterfield’s railway stations from the same source here.

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Our thanks to Philip Riden, John Hirst and members of the Derbyshire Victoria County History Trust’s Chesterfield research group for contributing to historical research for this plaque.