Date of closure: 23rd November 2025
Address (for reference only):
Mecca Bingo (Lost Halls)
Albemarle Crescent
Scarborough
YO11 1XS
Scarborough is a proper bingo-nerd venue. The building on Albemarle Crescent opened on 11 March 1929 as the Capitol Theatre, a 2,200-seat cine-variety super-cinema designed by Gray & Evans of Liverpool, complete with a full balcony, stage, orchestra pit, theatre organ and café. Its white faience exterior leaned classical rather than Art Deco, with rinceau panels, mask keystones and ornate pilaster capitals, making it a fascinating halfway point between the old picture palace era and what followed. The switch to bingo happened gradually rather than overnight. It became the Classic Cinema in the 1970s, and for a short spell bingo was played in the stalls while films kept running in the circle upstairs, before Mecca took over the whole building full time in 1977.
What makes Scarborough special is how much survived. Historic England’s listing, granted in 2000, notes the building’s elaborate classical decoration remained virtually intact, and its archive even includes photos of the original ceiling grilles and auditorium taken during its Mecca years. This wasn’t an anonymous modern hall hiding behind an old façade, the 1929 cinema was still there underneath the bingo. Mecca ran the club for roughly 48 years before it closed for good on 23 November 2025, but unlike most halls in this archive, the building isn’t facing demolition. Its Grade II listed status means Scarborough’s Capitol Theatre should be standing long after most of its Mecca contemporaries are gone.
I visited your club on Wednesday night on the 9th June 2010. I was a bit disgusted with a member of staff as I played the last late session. A member of staff was on his mobile phone texting while he was on the main stage, which quite a few people commented on. I didn’t think was very professional as we are told to turn our phones off.