Castle Leisure
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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 a online bingo site.
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[edit] 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 it's 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 punch-up between grandmothers, who fought over a 'lucky seat'.[2]
[edit] Castle Bingo Online
Many Bingo fans in South Wales were surprised how long it took for Castle Bingo to launch an online brand. For a long time their website was merely information based, with contact details and club information.
In mid-2006 they launched an online presence, partnering with the Bingo network St Minver. In April 2007 smoking ban will happen in Welsh clubs.
