Date of closure: 7th June 2026
Address (for reference only):
Mecca Bingo (Lost Halls)
42 Holmeside
Sunderland
SR1 3PD
Sunderland’s Mecca occupied one of the finest surviving Art Deco entertainment buildings in the North East, and one of the largest cinemas ever to become a bingo hall. It opened on 28 March 1932 as Black’s Regal Theatre, designed by Gray & Evans as a full cine-variety venue rather than a straightforward cinema, complete with a 57-foot proscenium, 40-foot deep stage, 10 dressing rooms and a Compton theatre organ that rose dramatically from beneath the stage. The original capacity was a staggering 2,522 seats, 1,422 in the stalls and 1,100 in the circle. Rank acquired the building in 1955, renaming it the Odeon, and in 1975 the vast auditorium was carved up into three separate screens to compete with changing audiences before the cinema finally closed in 1982.
The building stood empty for several years before Rank returned it to entertainment use, and remarkably the 1975 multiplex alterations were undone, restoring the single vast auditorium before it reopened as a Top Rank Bingo Club, later Mecca Bingo Sunderland. As a bingo venue it seated around 1,250, one of the biggest clubs in the North East, offering Mecca Max electronic bingo, a substantial slots arcade, bar and café, all just minutes from Park Lane Interchange and Sunderland railway station, though in its final years customers entered via Park Lane rather than the original Holmeside entrance due to surrounding redevelopment. The site itself had hosted public entertainment since the 19th century Olympia Exhibition Hall that stood there before the Regal was built. Caught up in the city’s regeneration plans, Mecca Sunderland closed in 2026, with customers directed to nearby clubs in Gateshead and Hartlepool, bringing to an end a run that saw the building preserved through cinema, wartime, multiplex conversion and decades of bingo rather than lost altogether.
