One of the admirable characteristics of the Methodist Church is its practicality.  As its name suggests, there is a methodical streak in its mission and its traditions, which impels its members to move with the times.

When Hugh Price Hughes’ Forward Movement prompted Methodists to attend to social care alongside individual faith, the Sheffield Wesleyan congregation looked at the four city-centre chapels and promptly knocked one down.

The Wesley Chapel, opened in 1780 by John Wesley himself, had become out-of-date and unsuitable for the church’s needs, so it was closed in 1906 and replaced by the magnificent Victoria Hall two years later.

Although £6,000 had been spent on refurbishing Wesley Chapel in 1875, its replacement cost £40,000 and the debt was cleared within three years.

The original design was by the short-lived Manchester practice of Waddington Son & Dunkerley, modified and completed by the Sheffield architect William John Hale (1862-1929).  The finished building is imposing, with an assertive façade and a huge tower with a baroque turret, built of brick and embellished with carvings by the brothers Alfred and William Tory.  When it was built it rivalled the other tall buildings in the city centre, the two town halls and the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches which are now both cathedrals.

Its main hall had three levels:  visitors entered from the street at circle level;  the floor of the hall was in the basement, and there was a balcony.  It was the best concert venue in Sheffield until the City Hall opened in 1932;  there are those that say it still is.  Significantly, the Hall was designed with spaces to serve a range of functions.

The first minister, Rev George McNeal (1874-1934), was recruited from the hugely successful Manchester and Salford Mission, and at the inauguration he made a landmark proclamation of intent. 

The Victoria Hall was to be –

• a great evangelical preaching centre
• the headquarters of a strong, vigorous and active Mission Church
• a house of mercy in the centre of the city with an ever-open door
• a people’s home, the social and religious centre of their thought and activity
• a rallying ground for all kinds of philanthropic and religious enterprise in the city

His declared aim was to create “a brighter, purer and happier Sheffield”.  Immediately – and for long after Rev McNeal moved in 1924 – the Sheffield Mission responded practically to the needs of local people.

He founded the Sheffield Mission Labour Yard near the Wicker which provided 5,903 days’ work to unemployed men by June 1909, chopping firewood, cleaning, whitewashing.

During the First World War the Hall offered a transient refuge for forces personnel travelling through the city.

Three days after the first night of the Sheffield Blitz in December 1940, the Victoria Hall staged a scheduled performance of Handel’s Messiah, though almost all the surrounding buildings were wrecked.

From May 1941 to the end of the Second World War the Hall ran a Forces’ Rest Hostel which provided food and shelter to 80,000 servicemen trapped overnight by erratic train services.

Eventually the carefully designed and expensively built Victoria Hall became outdated.  Congregations dwindled so the place was taken apart.  In 1965-66 a floor was inserted in the main hall at circle level to create a separate space in the basement, while maintaining capacity for large audiences and congregations on special occasions.

Five shops were inserted into the building on Chapel Walk, providing scope either for commercial rent or mission activity.

In 2003 Ablett Architects designed a refurbishment to the shops that harmonises better with the Edwardian original.

And yet again, in 2015, The Foundry Sheffield, which leases the building from the Methodist Church, is refurbishing and repurposing the Victoria Hall while joining the newly founded Sheffield Charitable Network.