Castle Leisure
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Castle Leisure is a privately owned company in existence since the mid-19th century and has been based in the same Cardiff office since 1856. Operating a number of leisure ventures down the years, they now have a chain of bingo halls and an online bingo site.
Castle Bingo Chain
With eight purpose built bingo halls in the area of South Wales and three others located in Barnes Hill Birmingham, Bootle Liverpool and Corby . The company built the first ever purpose built bingo hall[citation needed] in the UK, the Canton Castle, which is still open.[1]
They started with many small traditional clubs in South Wales including Abercynon, Kenfighill, Porth, Ebbw Vale and Pontypridd. Many of these were sold to Welcome Social Clubs, which in turn sold them to Top Ten. The last of the traditional bingo clubs was Pontypridd which they sold to Stardust Bing to fund the opening of their club in Neath. Two years later they opened a club just down the road from Pontypridd. Pontypridd closed its doors on the 16 June after trading for nearly 30 years with a loss of 20 jobs mainly blamed on the opening of Nantgarw and the smoking ban. In Early 2011 Castle Leisure expanded its South Wales Enterprise into England purchasing a further Three Bingo Halls and transforming them to resemble the look and layout of the previous eight. The newly purchased clubs are situated at Barnes Hill, Birmingham, Bootle, Liverpool and Corby. Castle leisure also has a large following online with castlebingo.co.uk They have two clubs in Cardiff, the others are in Bridgend, Merthyr Tydfil, Nantgarw, Neath, Newport, Swansea, Liverpool, Birmingham and Corby. The Nantgarw and Neath Clubs seat in excess of 1,000 people.
The Merthyr Tydfil club can be seen in the 2000 film House!, where it doubles as the newly opened (by Keith Chegwin) and fictional Mega Bingo building.
In 2002, the Bridgend Castle made the national press as the site of a physical brawl between grandmothers, who fought over a 'lucky seat'.[2]
Castle Bingo Online
In 2006 Castle launched an online presence, partnering with the Bingo network St Minver.
