The Palace nightclub building Chippenham to become flats

In 2022 plans to convert the Palace building, a former nightclub on Station Hill in Chippenham, into 13 residential flats were approved by Wiltshire Council.

Construction on the project began earlier this year.

Most recently in use as a mixed nightlife venue which closed several years ago, the property housed cocktail bar Tantra downstairs and nightclub SN15 upstairs.

While it has remained disused since then, the historic venue has been a staple of Station Hill for over 100 years and was a feature of the town’s nightlife for many of those years.

Originally a roller skating rink and cinema under the name The Electric Theatre, the building was showing films by 1910.

The Palace building on Station Hill, Chippenham (Image: Newsquest)

Four years later it was enlarged and converted into the Palace Theatre, a venue that lasted until 1936 before being closed by Gaumont British Theatres.

The Palace building would go on to become the Chippenham Royal Snooker Club before the business moved to the Ivy Road Industrial Estate.

For 14 years the venue was known as Buds 2000 nightclub before new owners carried out a £1.3 million facelift and rebranded the club as Karma in 2008.

Karma had its license revoked in 2011 after reports of crime and disorder in the area and remained shut for four years.

New owners briefly reopened the nightclub as The Palace before it was rebranded as Tantra and SN15, which shut permanently on Station Hill year after several years in business.

Now works to the inside of the building are well underway as the former nightclub is transformed into housing.

While planning permission for the scheme was granted in April 2022, work could not begin on extending and converting the property until August 2023.

The Palace building on Station Hill, Chippenham (Image: Newsquest)

This was due to a condition stating that details of the number, design, and location of bird nesting opportunities at the site must be submitted to the council before construction began.

The development will see the building transformed into 11 one-bedroom flats alongside two two-bedroom units.

BBA Architects Ltd, which designed the scheme, says the existing façade will be retained leaving the appearance of the site from Station Hill “largely unaltered”.

There will be extensions and alterations to the rear of the building.

In their design and access statement, the firm claimed reopening the club for commercial or leisure use would be “unviable in the current climate.”

They added that the development would provide “much needed local affordable housing” in the town centre.