The Pavilion Arts Centre was opened in 1889 as the new Entertainment Stage theatre on St John's Road in Buxton, Derbyshire, England.

The earliest theatre in Buxton was in a thatched house on Spring Gardens, which staged performances from c.1784 to c.1829 at the foot of Hardwick Street (replaced by Milligan's Drapery and Milliner's shop and where the Argos store is now).

The Literary and Dramatic Societies of local schools Buxton College and Cavendish Grammar School staged annual performances of either Shakespeare, such as Hamlet (1966), Coriolanus (1968) and Macbeth (1970), or modern works, such as Bertold Brecht's Life of Galileo (1967) and Dylan Thomas's The Doctor & the Devils (1969).

It was designed for the Buxton Gardens Company by local architect William Radford Bryden and was built of millstone grit stone by James Salt.

Bryden also designed the nearby Old Clubhouse (originally the Union Club), Solomon's Temple and the remodelling of the Thermal Baths in the 1880s.

The Picture House was then built in 1916 on Spring Gardens (on the site of the demolished Victoria Arcade and Swedish Gymnasium).