The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway Company (MS&LR) opened what was known as the Chesterfield Loop in 1892, and a tunnel was built for the railway to pass below Chesterfield itself, with the station at the northern end of the tunnel on Infirmary Road.
The MS&LR, which was nearly fifty years old by then and ran from Manchester to Grimsby, considered that they should try to extend to London, which was the principal market for coal from its area.
In 1889, Parliamentary permission was obtained for a line from Beighton, where the MS&LR crossed the Midland Railway, to Annesley, and a branch to Chesterfield. This was the first step on the road to London.
The first section from Beighton to Staveley Works opened in December 1891; and on June 4, 1892, the section from Staveley Town to Chesterfield was opened.
The station is pictured in the advert opposite – which is from a rival company magazine, a Midland Railway guide to Chesterfield, published in 1899.
It was published a year after a cricket pavilion was erected at Queen’s Park, Chesterfield, for the staging of a first Derbyshire CCC championship game, and it has since staged over 400 first-class matches.
The station became known as Chesterfield Central when the MS&LR changed its name to the Great Central Railway (GCR) in 1897.
The London extension opened to passengers in 1899 and its steam-hauled expresses from Sheffield to Marylebone Station were the fastest in the country. In 1921, the GCR amalgamated with several other railways to become the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER).
The station closed in 1963 and was demolished by 1973 to make way for Chesterfield’s inner-relief road, (the A61), much of which was built along the former trackbed of the GCR.
The 410-yard (370m) tunnel immediately to the south of the station, which ran from Brewery Street to Hollis Lane, remains in place, sealed at its northern end due to the road construction and the southern entrance behind large walls.