Bradford Oxford Bingo – Dudley Hill Road

The Oxford began life as the Oxford Hall Picture Palace, built by the Undercliffe Picture House Company as a permanent cinema for the district. It was a modest single-floor neighbourhood house with 678 seats and a classically influenced façade, later known as the Oxford Picture House and, from 1953, the Oxford Cinema. A 1955 makeover brought new seating, heating and carpets, plus a panoramic screen later adapted for CinemaScope. Bingo crept in during December 1962, with games on Thursday to Saturday evenings and films on the other days. Films ended in January 1966, and it reopened on 27 January as the Top Flight Bingo Club. The conversion stripped out the screen and proscenium and turned the old projection room into a bar. By 2007 it was in the hands of Stuart Nuttall’s Kingsway Bingo of Brighouse, which also ran the former Plaza cinema club on Cross Lane, so this was always an independent rather than a big-chain hall.

Bingo ran here for well over half a century. Cinema Treasures records the club closing on 16 March 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, and we’ve found no published reason beyond that timing. The ending was grim. A serious arson fire on the night of 28 February 2021 gutted the empty building and destroyed its roof, and by summer 2023 the site had been cleared. Nothing of the Oxford now survives.

Other Lost Halls In The Area

• Bradford Buzz Bingo – Bridge Street
• Bradford – Queensgate Leisure Prize Bingo
• Bradford Mecca Bingo – Little Horton Lane
• Bradford Silver Birch Bingo – Birch Lane
• Bradford Top Rank Bingo – Prince’s Way
• Leeds Mecca Bingo (Mayfair) – New York Street

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