Sheffield City Hall is a Grade II* listed building in Sheffield, England, containing several venues, ranging from the Oval Concert Hall which seats over 2,000 people to a ballroom featuring a sprung dance floor. It is currently operated by Sheffield International Venues.
The large hall dominates Barker's Pool, one of Sheffield's central squares, which also contains the city's War Memorial.
The building was designed in 1920 by E. Vincent Harris but construction was delayed 8 years because of the economic climate in the early 1920s. Eventually construction started with the laying of the foundation stone in 1929 and the City Hall was officially opened on 22 September 1932. During World War II a bomb exploded in Barkers Pool, damaging the pillars of the building. The scars of the explosion can still be seen to this day. It is a neo-classical building with a giant portico. The Oval Hall is the largest hall in the building, seating 2,271 people and is commanded by an angel's chorus. This provides both natural light to the main hall and can also be used by a hidden choir whose voices are carried through the building and down onto the audience. The Grand Willis III Organ is the largest in Sheffield with over 4000 pipes and four manuals. The organ sits in a chamber situated behind the large decorative grilles facing the audience.
The Oval Hall is complemented by the more intimate 500-seater Memorial Hall and the Ballroom which can host anything from after show parties to club nights and afternoon tea-dances.
In 2005, the City Hall and its surroundings were refurbished and re-developed at a cost of £12.5 million.
The hall is managed by the Sheffield City Trust, under a 99 year lease.
Manor Operatic Society perform their annual pantomime here.
Famous quotes containing the words city and/or hall:
“I counted two and seventy stenches,
All well defined and several stinks!
Ye Nymphs that reign o’er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“While there we heard the Indian fire his gun twice.... This sudden, loud, crashing noise in the still aisles of the forest, affected me like an insult to nature, or ill manners at any rate, as if you were to fire a gun in a hall or temple.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)