It’s been the best part of two decades since our clubs and lost halls were first set up, and it’s been at least 7 years since we had a thorough check on the clubs we have listed. It’s always been a bit of a massive undertaking to get the listings up to the standard I’d like, and as I now maintain this site on my own in my spare time around other work, it’s knocked everything back since the last site refresh in 2019.
I’d been able to update the odd raft of closures and move clubs that have closed to the right Lost Halls section here and there, but as my time is so stretched, I was aware of lots of clubs closing and disappearing from service that I didn’t have time to move. I’d been promising a check on these clubs for a long-time, but kept having to put it off. Earlier this summer, I was off work and had a bit of spare time, so I decided I would make a start double checking the open clubs listings and moving those that were now shut.
This was back in July, and it’s taken me the best part of 3 months to get to where we are today. So what’s changed? I’ve gone through the entire club listings and moved those that are no longer open to the Lost Halls archive. It may not seem like such a big deal, but as a part of updating the pages, I’d wanted to update what were at times scant details about the clubs. This included additional information on the club’s history and finding additional photos to add to their gallery sections – all of which takes a lot of time to do.
So, what have I done? Well, I’ve gone through the UK Club Finder section and moved any closed clubs, alongside clubs that have changed ownership, been bought up by other chains, gone independent and updated the various bingo chain pages as well. Excitedly, I’ve also been able to add the odd new club, which is heartening to see!
I’ve also reorganised the big chains, as due to the way the site is built, it would mix open and closed clubs in the same chain listing. So now the chain pages under the open clubs section only feature clubs that are actually open, and the closed clubs have their own chain page for the clubs closed under that chain’s operation. Phew! That took a lot of head scratching and moving and redirecting pages, but thankfully, that’s now done so the listing should be accurate for this period in time.
And that’s not all, each page that was moved into the lost halls section got a but of an upgrade with the amount of information on the clubs. The club history section has been expanded and updated with information about the prior usage and ownerships of the club, and where we know, when and why they were closed. I’ve also dug in and tried to find images for the gallery pages of the closed clubs, and in the majority of cases, I was able to add a number of gallery images to each club. I’ve done the same with any new clubs in the open section, and when clubs have changed ownership, they’ve had the same treatment.
So for the time being, the club finder is as accurate as it is possible to be. There are still clubs out there, I’m sure, that I’ve not got listed. However, the big chains are complete. If it’s listed on the official sites, it’s in our club finder section. With the multisite companies it’s easier to manually check their properties. For independent clubs it’s a bit more hit and miss, but I think I’ve got the majority, but there may be the odd one or two that we’re missing.
Sadly, this has seen almost a 100 clubs moved to the archive, fallen silent from the culture and stories that used to echo around them there halls. Several old chains have gone the way of the dodo as well, notable Premier Bingo, Top Ten Bingo and Beacon Bingo. But it’s not all bad news. Some chains have expanded their clubs and are going strong, Castle Bingo, Club 3000 Bingo and newcomers Real Fun are there representing for the plucky smaller chains against the giants. The giants however, Mecca Bingo and Buzz have take a bit of a battering and lost a large number of clubs in recent years.
This stint of work is really the tip of the iceberg of what needs to be done in the clubs and lost halls sections, really. I want to one day go through each club, expand the info (there’s a lot more info to be found on many of the older halls these days than when we first made the pages), and also add more images if I can source them. The open clubs need all their details updating where possible, as well as updated info and galleries. It’s a lot for one man with no-time to do, but I think it’s a worthwhile endeavour so I will try in the future. However, for the time being, the fact the closed clubs have been stripped out will have to be enough for the time being…
