New Chesterfield town centre bar set to open next month inside listed building that has sat empty for years – once home to popular venues

The former home of Heathcotes and S41, opposite the Crooked Spire on St Mary's Gate, is set to open once again – with a new bar called Saints being launched inside the Grade II listed building over the coming weeks.

Courtnay Wattam and her husband Sam Wattam, along with their friend Arvinder Singh, bought the building - with Courtnay revealing the poor condition it had been left in after lying empty for several years.

She said: “It has been shut since the Covid-19 pandemic and it had been vandalised. It was horrendous upstairs, all of that was trashed. All of the doors had been smashed to pieces and there was graffiti painted on the walls.

“The electrics had all been cut out, so it needed pretty much a full rewire. The meter itself had been cut out, so we had to pay for a new one - so for the first two months of owning the building we had no electricity to do any work.

“They literally ripped out everything, there was no bar. It’s a Grade II listed building, and there was damp coming through the walls as well.”

The team at the helm of the bar have plenty of experience in pubs around the Chesterfield area - with Courtnay confirming when they are hoping to open Saints to the public.

She said: “We’re hoping to open at the end of March. I’ve worked in and out of pubs throughout my late teens and early twenties - I used to work at Escapade nightclub back in the day and various other bars around Chesterfield.

“My husband is a sound engineer, so he works with tribute bands and goes up and down the country doing that. Our bar manager Ben, who is Sam’s brother, used to manage the Old Poets Corner in Ashover - and was also Mick Jagger in a Rolling Stones tribute band. We know a lot of musicians throughout Chesterfield so were hoping to get some decent acts and nights on.”

Courtnay explained that they stumbled across the venue by chance, having initially tried to purchase a pub in Brimington.

She said: “Originally we tried to buy The Mill in Brimington. It would’ve been a gorgeous pub again, but it would've been more of a family place. We were very close to buying it, but the owner wanted to go to auction and it went for a ridiculous price.

“This building was on the same auction but we missed it, and we were kicking ourselves. I remember going in back when it was S41, so we wished that we’d bought it or at least looked into it.

“We had a look at a couple of other venues, like Sevens, and then we randomly heard that it was going back up for auction. My husband was just walking through town and he saw the owner coming out of the front door - he said he’d heard that it was going to auction again and asked if we could buy it off him directly and it just went from there.”

Courtnay said that the team were looking forward to welcoming customers to the revamped bar - aiming to create a similar atmosphere to that offered by another popular venue in Brampton.

She said: “It’s been a venue ever since the 80s, so it's been going on 50 years nearly - and it’ll be nice to get it back. Part of it was originally built in the 1400s and then it was extended in the 1600s, so it’s a blue plaque building. It’s stunning and it will be so nice when it’s all done.

“We don’t want to be known just as a music venue, we want to offer a bit of everything. We’re going to have live acts and theme nights. We’ve got a grand piano which is stunning, and was donated to us by a church, which is quite fitting with us being called Saints Bar. We want to offer a similar vibe to Junction, but in the town centre - a meet and greet place but somewhere that you can spend all night if you want to.

“I’ve painted a mural inside, which is quite funky. It’s St Mary, but it hasn’t been done in a traditional, religious way - it’s a nice contrast against the wood-panelling.”

Sam is hoping to create a separate cocktail bar to cut waiting times for customers – and a drinks alchemist is coming from London to design the drinks menu with a signature Saints cocktail.

Courtnay added: “Apparently, it used to be famous for champagne darlings - that was the drink all the way back to it being Heathcotes, so we want to bring that back. We want to bring in bottomless brunches with tapas-type foods - I’ve got a cheffing history and I have some Spanish family so I’d like to do that. It’s going to be a bar that serves nibbles rather than a restaurant. In terms of cocktails, we won’t be doing anything too ‘faffy’ - it’ll be things like Long Island ice teas and mai tais.”