Square Roots: The Room Built to Be Heard In

There is a building in Halifax that was designed around a very simple idea: everyone in the room should be able to see and hear the person speaking.

It's Square Chapel. It stands on Square Road, next to the Piece Hall and not far from Eureka! The National Children’s Museum, close to the town centre as well. It's made of red brick, which is unusual for this part of Calderdale, and it has a square base rather than the long rectangular shape you'd expect from a traditional church or chapel.

And it's shut.

Square Chapel has been closed to the public since February 2025. That's the simple fact of it, and it's why I've started exploring whether it might be possible to bring it back into use as an arts centre.

Before I go any further, I should say this plainly: the Save Square Chapel community group has run an amazing campaign to try to get the building open again. They kept the issue alive when the building was shut and quiet, and they deserve real credit for that. I've been working with that group and supporting that campaign, so my involvement didn't start from nowhere.

I do want to be careful here. I'm exploring it. I'm not announcing that the building has reopened, I'm not saying I've secured it, and I'm not presenting a finished plan or making a promise about what happens next. What I am saying is that, despite the work already being done, I got to the point where I felt I needed to do more and be more directly involved.

This is the first post in a series about the place, why it matters and what would need to be true for it to have a future.

And right near the start, I'd better say this as well: any credible future for Square Chapel needs four parts working together - Calderdale Council, Arts Council England, the Save Square Chapel community group, and the local business community of Halifax and the wider area. I'm not claiming support has been secured from any of them. I'm saying that, from where I stand, those are the four parts that would need to come together, and I hope I can help that conversation along. The local business community isn't some bystander, or just a donor to be tapped when the tin starts rattling. It's part of the work. Businesses in and around Halifax have a direct stake in the town centre being alive, and a working arts venue is part of what makes a town somewhere people actually want to spend time.

The point of getting those four around the same table is simple enough. Goodwill is not a business model. If Square Chapel is going to have a credible future, it needs a financially stable working model that secures the building, secures its future, and secures its status as an arts centre. And I don't think that's just a Halifax question, either. Done properly, Square Chapel can be a cultural icon for West Yorkshire as well, not just a local asset.

That also takes me back to why the place matters in the first place. It was put up in 1772 to meet a simple human need: a room where people could gather, hear and take part. Everything since ought to be built on those same foundations. The building's reason for existing was never complicated, and that's exactly why it has lasted. And if there's a way forward, in my view it starts with making sure voices are heard - the people who used the building, the people who live around it, the artists, and the businesses.

A room with a very clear purpose

Square Chapel was built in 1772 at the instigation of Titus Knight, a local preacher and former coal miner, with its design associated with Thomas Bradley and James Kershaw.

According to the history recorded by Calderdale Local Studies, Knight had begun preaching to a congregation of Protestant dissenters in cottages on Gaol Lane. The congregation grew, the cottages weren't enough any more, and a new building was needed, so they built Square Chapel.

John Wesley visited in July 1772, shortly after it opened. That gives you a fair idea of the building's place in the religious and social life of the town at the time.

But the really interesting thing about the chapel, to me anyway, isn't just its age. It's the shape.

The square plan meant the room could be arranged with no internal supporting columns getting in the way. People could look towards the preacher without peering round a stone pillar or doing that awkward neck stretch people still do now when they've chosen the wrong seat.

It sounds obvious now. In 1772, it was smart.

The room was built for people to gather, listen and take part. It wasn't designed as a monument to be admired from the outside. The point of it was what happened inside, which is probably why it still feels so suited to gathering. You can see why it became an arts centre. The room already understood audiences.

A building that changed with the town

Square Chapel did not remain exactly what it was in 1772.

By the middle of the 19th century, the congregation had outgrown it, so a new Square Congregational Church was built on the site to the north and opened in 1857. The original chapel then became a Sunday school.

I think that's worth noticing. The building didn't become irrelevant just because its first purpose had changed. It got another job.

The larger Square Congregational Church, built beside the chapel in the 1850s, was largely demolished in 1976. Its surviving steeple was retained and later incorporated into Halifax Central Library and Archives.

Historic England records identify the chapel and the steeple individually as Grade II* listed buildings, while current marketing material describes the property more generally as Grade II. The listing recognises the architectural and historic importance of the place, but it doesn't make a building useful by itself. It protects significance. It doesn't fill the room.

And that's really the question for me: what does a building like this do next?

From chapel to arts centre

Contemporary and retrospective accounts report that, in 1988, six local theatre lovers bought the neglected building for £25 to save it from demolition.

Square Chapel has been used as an arts centre since 1992.

Over the years it became a place for live performance, music, theatre, film, community events and other forms of creative work. In 2017, a £6.6 million refurbishment was completed, creating a multi-use arts space with two performance areas, seating 220 and 115 people, as well as a café and bar.

That's quite a journey for a building that started life as a meeting place for dissenting worshippers. But when you think about it, maybe it isn't that strange after all. The audience changed. The reason for gathering changed. The need for a room where people can be together didn't.

People often talk about buildings in terms of capacity, facilities and financial performance, and fair enough, those things matter. Any venue has to work in the real world, pay its bills and make sensible decisions.

But I still come back to a simpler question: what does the building make possible?

In the case of Square Chapel, it makes possible a shared experience in a room with character. It sits in the middle of Halifax, close to major visitor attractions and surrounded by the life of the town. It's not hidden away on an industrial estate or tucked into an out-of-town complex.

It's part of the place.

Why I am looking at it

I am interested in Square Chapel because it represents something Halifax needs more of: a proper place for people to come together.

Part of the reason I'm stepping forward is that this kind of challenge needs a particular set of skills. My career and training have given me useful experience in buildings, budgets, plant and infrastructure, how to keep an organisation trading, and how to bring people together around a difficult problem.

That doesn't have to mean everyone sitting quietly in rows. It might be a performance, a film, a conversation, a workshop, music, an exhibition or something nobody's thought of yet.

The point, really, is that the building can hold people. It can hold an audience, but it can also hold ideas. It can give local artists somewhere to work, businesses somewhere to meet people, and residents a reason to come into the centre of town and stay a while.

The building's own history makes that possible. It has already changed purpose more than once. It has been a chapel, a Sunday school and an arts centre. Its story isn't about one fixed use lasting forever. It's about finding a useful next chapter.

That's what I'm trying to explore here. Not ownership for its own sake. Not a grand announcement. And not a promise I can't yet keep. Just an attempt to understand what would need to be true for Square Chapel to become a working arts centre again.

The hard bit

Caring about a building is the easy bit. Working out how it can survive is harder.

There have been arts venues in towns and cities across the country that struggled to make the numbers work. Square Chapel isn't separate from that wider reality, so this can't be based only on affection for the building, although affection is a perfectly good place to start.

It would need a model that understands the building's history and deals honestly with its costs. It would need audiences, artists, businesses, community groups and other partners in the conversation. It would need trading income, sensible management, and people who understand both the creative side and the practical side.

Most importantly, it would need to be built around the building and the town rather than trying to force either of them into some standard template.

I don't yet know what that model looks like in full. That's the point of the exercise.

The sensible thing is to ask questions before making claims. What does Halifax need from a venue? What could Square Chapel do particularly well? How can a space be welcoming without becoming bland? How can it support local creative work while bringing in enough activity to remain open? How do you make the economics work without losing the character?

Those seem to me better questions than asking who is to blame for what has already happened.

What comes next

The future of Square Chapel should be discussed carefully and openly.

For me, this series is a way of setting out why I think the building matters and what I'm trying to understand. I'll share the history, the possibilities and the difficult parts as clearly as I can.

There's no completed plan hidden behind this first post.

There is a building with nearly 250 years of history, a room designed to bring people together and a town that deserves places where people can meet in person.

I'm going to see whether there is a sensible way forward.

That starts with listening.

Source note: Historic England (National Heritage List), Calderdale Local Studies, Watling Real Estate's marketing material, Telegraph & Argus, and Equity.

if anything I've said today struck a chord with you and you'd like a chat or if you have a particular challenge with energy, power & infrastructure, business generally or you might like to use the studio, drop me an email at andrew@aelhawley.com - if you'd like to, you can drop a comment below and, I think I'm supposed to say like and subscribe but I won't. See you on Sunday in the field.. that to be clear, isnt my garden.