Storyhouse is a theatre, cinema, central library and renowned restaurant. The theatre is in a new extension, behind the screen of the original Odeon, and is enviably flexible – from an 800-seat proscenium for touring shows and concerts, to a 500-seat thrust stage for in-house productions. There’s also a 150-seat studio and a linked bar. A 100-seat independent cinema is suspended in a box above the kitchens, restaurant and bar. Add the major library, meeting rooms, story-telling spaces, informal performance areas and a big screen that can be lowered from the original proscenium arch and it is unique, amazing and multi award-winning.

Storyhouse was built in 1936 as an imposing, Art Deco Odeon cinema. Despite a couple of conversions to multiplex screens, the main internal fabric and proscenium arch remained intact.

The building was listed Grade II in 1989, but closed in 2007 and remained unused until Storyhouse was completed in 2017. Chester lacked not only a cinema but also a professional theatre following the demise of the Gateway in 2007, and in 2012 the decision was made to revitalise the building. The structure couldn’t accommodate a theatre, so an office block was bought to make way for what would be an integrated cultural hub. Storyhouse thus became one of the UK’s largest regional arts projects and, at £37m, the biggest capital development in Chester for 50 years, opened by the Queen in 2018.

Around 150 community groups use Story-house and it had more than a million customers in its first year. Storyhouse also runs the popular Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre each summer.