On your right, Storyhouse shows itself as a long red-brick Art Deco frontage with a smooth curved corner and tall vertical window bands, tied to a larger modern extension behind.
This began as Chester’s Odeon cinema, which opened on the third of October, nineteen thirty-six. Architect Robert Bullivant designed it under Harry Weedon’s direction, and it held more than sixteen hundred people... serious cinema ambition for Chester. Most Odeons of that era wore ceramic tiles, but this one used red brick so it would sit more politely beside the cathedral and the Victorian town hall. Even glamour, it seems, can read the room.
By nineteen seventy-six, operators split the big auditorium into three screens, then added two more in nineteen ninety-one. The clever part is that much of the main interior survived, including the proscenium arch, the framed opening between stage and audience in a traditional theatre. Historic England gave the building Grade Two listed status in nineteen eighty-nine, recognizing it as worth protecting. Then the Odeon closed in two thousand and seven, and for a while this place simply waited.
That closure mattered because Chester lost more than a cinema. The Gateway Theatre had also closed in two thousand and seven, after council leaders planned a new theatre as part of the Northgate redevelopment. Then the financial crisis of two thousand and eight stopped that project. For a stretch, the city had no professional theatre and no city-centre cinema... a slightly awkward gap for a place that has been staging public entertainment since Roman times.
The revival started in two thousand and twelve, when Cheshire West and Chester Council chose to transform this derelict Odeon. Architects Bennetts Associates and theatre planners Charcoalblue soon realized the old shell could not hold a modern theatre by itself, so they added a new extension after demolishing the neighboring office block. An archaeological survey even uncovered Roman roads on the site. In Chester, even the groundwork has a backstory. If you fancy a quick look, the side-by-side in the app shows the old Odeon keeping its elegant curve while gaining a whole new life.
Storyhouse opened in May two thousand and seventeen with Alex Clifton’s new version of The Beggar’s Opera. Queen Elizabeth the Second and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, gave it an official opening in June two thousand and eighteen. Today it folds together a theatre, cinema, library, and restaurant. The main auditorium can switch from an eight-hundred-seat proscenium layout to a five-hundred-seat thrust stage, where the acting space pushes out into the audience. There is also a smaller Garrett Theatre, and the library runs through the old cinema building instead of hiding in one separate room. If you glance at your screen, image three shows that unusual mix of books, public space, and cinema shell.
The project cost thirty-seven million pounds, brought in more than a million visitors in its first year, and turned a closed cinema into one of Chester’s boldest reinventions.
If you want to come back inside later, Storyhouse usually opens from eight in the morning to eleven at night, and from nine-thirty on Sundays.
Storyhouse proves that preservation and reinvention can get along just fine. Take your time here, and when you’re ready, we can continue to the cathedral.
