Bandstand

Todmorden Town Council is fortunate to have been awarded a grant of c£248,000 from the National Hertiage Lottery Fund to support the restoration of the Grade II Listed Bandstand in Centre Vale Park, part of which will fund some of the capital works, as well as fund projects to encourage greater understanding of heritage by a select number of students from the high school, including an introduction to Architecture as a career.

It’s wonderful to know that, thanks to money raised by National Lottery players, local people will be able to come together and enjoy performances in this unique space once again.

The historic and iconic bandstand in Todmorden’s Centre Vale Park is the last remaining example of an exceptional design of outdoor performance facility.

The park’s surroundings of steep woodland and views of the Pennine hills and Moorland beyond provide an exceptional location to match, but sadly the bandstand has been out of use and neglected for over ten years.

Following community lobbying it has recently been awarded Grade II listed status and saved from demolition, but in its derelict, fenced-off condition, it remains a depressing sight that undermines residents’ enjoyment of their town’s key recreational space.

The bandstand is over a century old. According to The Friends of Centre Vale Park, in 1914 the borough councillors for Todmorden invited local craftsmen to design and erect a bandstand in the park, along with three shelters and a bowling pavilion. The bandstand was opened officially on 26th June, 1914.

Of around 1500 traditional bandstands that were built in Britain in the Victorian era and onwards, only a handful were of the type seen at Centre Vale – an open-fronted “theatre style” structure, with acoustic properties designed specifically to project sound effectively into the park.

For the latest progress on the Bandstand project visit the Updates & Milestones page.