Portland Hotel and Market Place Railway Station

This plaque is situated to the right on the frontage of the Portland Hotel, New Square. It was installed in July 2024. It was sponsored by Eat Midlands Railway Community Fund.

The Portland Hotel

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 him. 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 Portland Hotel, pictured before our plaque was fitted, which occupies a site just to the right of the far-right bay window.

The Market Place Station

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 Maynard’s Meadows, adjacent to the station’s site. The line, in its truncated form, opened in 1897.

The now demolished Chesterfield Market Place Station of the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway. Next door, to the left, is the Portland Hotel. (Collection P Cousins).

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 and 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)

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.

Our thanks to former Chairman Philip Riden for sourcing this plaque and for historical research carried out. Also to John Hirst for information on the Portland Hotel; to Wetherspoons for allowing the plaque to be sited and East Midlands Railway Community Fund for sponsorship.

Joe Argyle, (right), regional manager of the Portland Hotel with Howard Borrell, civic society Chair, at the unveiling of the hotel plaque on 23 July 2024. Sponsored by East Midlands Railway Community Fund the plaque commemorates the hotel itself and the now demolished Market Place railway station which stood next to it.

Page last updated 9 August 2024.