Chain: Crown Bingo (Lost Halls)
Crown Bingo is operated by Peter Arnett Leisure, founded by Peter Arnett, who opened the company’s first club in Gosport, Hampshire, in 1968. The business is now run by his two sons, Peter and Nick, and today operates three clubs on the south coast of England, down from a wider estate that once included additional sites in Gosport and Portsmouth.
The Portsmouth club, on Kingston Road, has a particularly long history behind it — the building opened as The Shaftesbury Hall in 1890, converted to a cinema in 1910, and switched to bingo use in 1960, a common path for Victorian and Edwardian entertainment venues of that era. The club closed in April 2014, with falling player numbers cited as the main cause, a decline attributed to the smoking ban and the rise of online bingo; at the time, the site had reportedly been kept afloat by profits from Crown’s other clubs before its eventual closure. The building has since stood empty, with plans approved for partial demolition to make way for shops and homes, though the façade is set to be retained.
The chain’s original Gosport club, on Forton Road, also closed after 52 years of trading, with the closure announced via a Facebook post citing a difficult decision to shut the venue.
Both closures reflect the wider pressures facing smaller independent chains across the industry — changing entertainment habits, rising costs, and shrinking footfall — even as Crown Bingo has continued to trade with its remaining clubs in Bognor Regis, Cosham, and Leigh Park.
