Auction of Chesterfield's former nightclub/cinema where Jimi Hendrix played

Bids are invited for the Cavendish Street property which has a guide price of £350,000.

The building, where homeware retailer Boyes operates on the ground floor, will be auctioned on Thursday, April 28, at 10am.

The listing on SDL Property Auctions website states: “We feel the building would lend itself well to being redeveloped into a variety of schemes, perhaps a mixed use commercial residential and office. This would be subject to applying and receiving planning consent.”

Boyes will continue to trade from the premises under its current lease which the retailer took on in 2014.

The three-storey building extends to 33,210 sq ft and was built to an Art Deco design with concrete and brick elevations in 1930.

Originally the Regal Cinema, the building had 2,048 seats, a 16ft stage with four dressing rooms and an organ. The first film to be shown there was Follow the Fleet, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, in 1936. In 1961 the picture palace was renamed ABC and during that decade housed many pop shows including The Walker Brothers, Jimi Hendrix, Cat Stevens & Engelbert Humperdinck, Traffic and The Kinks. Jimi Hendrix achieved global superstardom in a short four-year career but his concert in Chesterfield in April 1967 left the Derbyshire Times critic unimpressed. Under the headline: “Release me from the noisy mob”, the reviewer wrote: “Jimi Hendrix and the Experience is one Experience I would rather forget. The volatile performer was completely unintelligible.”

The building was closed in June 1971 for conversion into a smaller cinema and the creation of the Painted Wagon pub in the rear stalls area.

Latterly, the cinema reverted to its orginal name of Regal. The cinema continued showing films until April 1993 when its last screening was The Distinguished Gentleman starring Eddie Murphy.

Following its closure as a cinema, the building housed several nightclubs including Zanzibar, Escapade and Department with the latter shutting its doors for the last time a decade ago.

Last year the Derbyshire Times reported that the sale of the building ‘presents an exciting opportunity’ for an operator willing to invest in Chesterfield’.