Former Temperance Billiard Hall

The former Temperance Billiard Hall, now a snooker centre when surveyed, was constructed around 1907, with minor alterations in the late 20th century. Designed by Norman Evans, who served as company architect for the Temperance Billiard Hall Company of Pendleton, it is built of red brick and terracotta, with a lead sheet covered roof. The building has a rectangular plan and features an open sports hall beneath a barrel-vaulted roof supported by curved composite timber roof trusses.

The front elevation exhibits a stilted semicircular design. It incorporates a wide Venetian window above an advanced single-storey entrance bay projecting to the street. This entrance bay is composed of a domed pavilion to the left, featuring semicircular-headed door and window openings; a central, nine-light, shallow-curved bow window, with original window frames and glass behind a covering; and a set-back secondary entrance with double doors, beneath a projecting curved canopy featuring a dentilled cill and three semicircular-headed lights with stained glass panels. An "oeil de boeuf" window is located to the wall’s left. A bold, bracketed eaves cornice links all elements of the front elevation. The decorative glass in the front elevation is in the Art Nouveau style. To the right side there are three five-light dormer windows, their roofs penetrating the curved lead-sheeted roof. A truncated ventilator cupola sits on the ridge towards the rear of the roof.

Inside, the hall is undivided, with metal tie rods at wall-plate level connecting the feet of the roof trusses. Original seating benches are set between the truss feet, with surviving original canopies mostly concealed. An ornate cast-iron spiral staircase leads to the basement services. Some moulded plasterwork is present in the interior of the entrance pavilion.

The Temperance Billiard Hall Company founded a number of halls throughout Greater Manchester and South London. Established by H. Neville Barley, the company’s aim was to move billiards away from public houses. The Chorlton hall is notable as a purpose-built facility furthering the objectives of the Temperance movement. Norman Evans was company architect from 1906 to 1910, and the Chorlton hall is considered the finest and most complete of his surviving designs in the Greater Manchester area.