Stand on Church Street with the cathedral behind you and Cutlers’ Hall is the building straight ahead, its classical front and famous silver doors giving away very little of the scale inside. This is the third hall on the site and it went up in 1832, designed by Samuel Worth and Benjamin Broomhead Taylor for the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire, the ancient body that has represented Sheffield’s metal trades since the 17th century and which still holds its Cutlers’ Feast here every year, as it has done since 1648. It is Grade II* listed, and it is unquestionably the grandest interior in the city.
The building grew as Sheffield’s wealth grew. Flockton and Abbott added the enormous banqueting hall in the 1860s, a room 110 feet long with a gallery running above it that was built to serve dinner to 500 people; a further extension in 1888 brought a drawing room nearly 70 feet long. Between them, the Main Hall, the Old Banqueting Hall, the Drawing Room and the Reception Room give you sweeping staircases, chandeliers, portraits and gilded plasterwork, with the Goodwin Room set aside as a bridal suite for the morning.
For all the history, it is an easy venue to get married in. Everything happens under one roof, so the ceremony, the drinks, the dinner and the dancing flow from room to room without anyone getting into a car; the station is a short walk away and the city’s hotels are all around you. Catering is handled in house, with packages built around a three-course wedding breakfast, wine, a champagne toast and an evening buffet, and the kitchen is used to writing menus for multicultural celebrations rather than treating them as an exception.
Where the band sets up
Rooms of this size and splendour are made for live music, and a band on a stage at the end of the Old Banqueting Hall with a dancefloor stretching out beneath the gallery is about as good as a Sheffield evening gets. Do bear in mind that high ceilings and hard historic surfaces produce a lively acoustic, so book a group who are comfortable in a big formal room and who will bring a PA to match it. A string quartet or a harpist during the drinks in the Reception Room is the other classic move here, and the building flatters both.
How the evening runs
The hall keeps an in-house DJ and disco available from 7pm through to 1am, which tells you something useful: this is a venue that expects a late, lively night rather than a polite early finish. A band will usually play the middle of that window, with two sets and an encore, and recorded music filling the gaps and the tail end. Confirm your own finish time when you book, agree a load-in slot in advance — it is a city-centre building and unloading needs planning — and check whether there is any limit on volume in the room you choose.
Bands available in South Yorkshire and perfectly at home in a venue like this.
More live music in South Yorkshire.
- South Yorkshire Wedding Bands
- South Yorkshire Events Bands
- Tribute Acts in South Yorkshire
- Wedding DJs in South Yorkshire
- Corporate Entertainment in South Yorkshire
Worth reading before you book: Sound Limiters Explained. More questions answered on our England & Wales FAQs.