Old Railway Institute could be new theatre

An old Derby building could provide a useful future venue for local amateur dramatic groups, according to Maxwell Craven, right, who recently visited the former Railway Institute.

When the so-called ‘Railway Village’ was constructed in Derby by the North Midland Railway in 1841-42, to the designs of Francis Thompson, the complex included the station itself, 70 workers’ cottages, an hotel, three shops and an inn.

The cottages consisted of a number of different designs relating to size – status still meant something in those days, especially amongst employees – and also to the shape of the site.

On the Railway Terrace- Midland Place corner, for instance, was a block of 15 quite ambitious houses intended for superior employees – a fine three-storey classical brick building, with five bays at the front on to the main road and with the curving angle cleverly recessed.

The top floor was treated as an attic and the ground-floor windows and doors were round-headed and set in blind arches. The whole building, like the station, hotel and inn, stood out as one of the distinctive features that made the entire ensemble exceptionally fine and memorable.

Meanwhile, the NMR became part of the Midland Railway in 1844 and, for the next 50 years, saw a huge increase in the number of employees.

The Railway Institute, Railway Terrace, Derby, which contains an impressive 500-seater lecture theatre.

As early as 1848, a reading room and library were set up by a group of employees meeting in a room in the Brunswick Inn. They were soon granted accommodation in a pair of houses in Leeds Place, moving to a suite under the huge first floor shareholders’ room added to the station by J H Saunders in 1857.

In 1891, the company resolved to accommodate this in an institute. It was decided to build it on the site occupied by the grandest of the railway cottages, the three-storey block on the Midland Place corner. As a result, 15 houses had to be pulled down to shoe-horn the large and ambitious building, designed by company architect Charles Trubshaw, into the original site. Unfortunately, this included the cottages previously lived in by Derby’s first stationmaster, George Henry Rickman, and also that of the first MR Locomotive superintendent, Matthew Kirtley.

The building sported an octagonal corner tower and long gabled facades, liberally embellished with terracotta. Inside it boasted extremely light, airy and lofty rooms.

It was opened on February 16, 1894, by the Midland chairman, G E Paget. Its library held 14,000 books. There were three lecture rooms, a magazine and newspaper room, games room, café and coffee room. Membership was open to all employees for a modest subscription.

Of course, nationalisation in 1948 robbed the railway of much of its esprit de corps, the paternalism – much reviled by radicals but actually a comforting aspect of any large employer – and its sense of community. Over the following decades, the institute slowly died and the books of the library were dispersed in 1963. By the 1980s, it had been sold off and let as the GPO Social Club.

The future of this vast unlisted building began to look bleak, until brothers Karl and Frazer Sanders came along and turned it into a very large pub and café bar called the Waterfall, which opened in 1996.

So large is the building, however, that they are still restoring it. As part of this project, they have recently begun to tackle what I see as the “jewel in the crown”.

Running across the building on the upper floor, at the north end, is the “lecture and concert hall” provided by the MR. It has a fully operational stage, back-stage facilities and seating for 500.

I visited it recently and it is a most spectacular room which, as pointed out by the Sanders, would make a terrific alternative home for the combined amateur theatrical groups of Derby and District.

Anyone connected with these excellent thespians should contact Karl or Frazer on 01332 366517 (e-mail karl.sanders@waterfall-derby.com) who would be delighted to hear from them.

This incredibly large building needs to have all its spaces used and this would make good use of a wonderful facility, liberate the amateur groups from the whims of Playhouse directors and provide them with facilities of undreamt spaciousness.

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Railway Institute bar was known as Platform Seven

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