Gliderdrome Bingo Boston

Club Details

These details were checked against the venue’s own listings, though schedules and prices are subject to change.

Opening Times

Session Times

Session Prices

Tickets to the games here are sold as packages. Evenings offer three. £10 buys three 10-page main books and three 2-page links, £15 doubles both to six, and £20 gets you the same as the £15 package but pays double money on the main game houses. Every evening package also carries two Sweet 16, two National, six Ready Steady Go, four Starlight and a Stump.

Afternoons come down to a straight choice of two. Both are £10 or £15 for six 10-page mains, six 2-page links, two Sweet 16 and two National, and again it’s the dearer one that pays double on the main houses.

In terms of extras, upgrading the National to five books or the Sweet 16 to four costs £1. Evenings add a Classic Green two-pager at £2 and sell Pharaoh’s Gold for £1 in the interval. Afternoons charge £1 for a Stump, which the evening packages throw in anyway, and sell Starlight at £1 during the break.

There are no electronic tickets at the Gliderdrome, so everything is played on paper and books get marked by hand.

Latest Pictures

About Gliderdrome Bingo

Boston’s oldest bingo hall is also the most famous building in town, and the same family has owned it for nearly 90 years. Brothers Ernest and Sydney Malkinson opened an open-air roller skating rink on the site in 1939, roofed it over within months as the war started, and let dancing creep in at the end of the skating until the dancing won outright. Fire destroyed the lot on 24 May 1959, but its replacement was trading again by 27 January 1960.

What went up next was the Starlight Room, and for almost nine years from November 1964 it pulled nearly every name in British pop to a market town in the Lincolnshire fens. Tom Jones, Dusty Springfield, The Who, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, T Rex, Elton John and Status Quo all appeared. Amen Corner broke up after their final gig on the same stage. On the busiest nights the queue ran down Shodfriars Lane and round into the Market Place, and coaches arrived from across the country. Sydney had even booked The Beatles two years or so earlier, as a support act, then cancelled because £35 looked like a lot for a group nobody had heard of.

Bingo arrived during the sixties boom and outlived the pop nights, which finished in April 1973. It runs four days a week now, Tuesday, Friday and Sunday evenings plus Wednesday afternoons, in the plainer 1960 hall rather than the Starlight Room. Sydney’s son Stephen and another Malkinson, Andrew, are partners in the company today, so the people calling the numbers work for the same family that booked Hendrix.

The building does more than bingo too. Live music plays most Saturday nights, and a roller disco runs every Friday, which is fitting given the Malkinsons opened the place as a skating rink.

If you plan on driving in, come off John Adams Way and head for York Street via Rowley Road or Main Ridge East, then follow Spayne Road round and turn right into Spain Place. Parking on site is free, and the pay and display at the end of Spayne Road usually has room if it fills up. Buses stop on Spayne Road as well, on more than 16 routes, including the 55, 65, M3, G68, B20, X57, and the 57 Interconnect. Both the town centre and the Market Place are barely five minutes away on foot.

Bingo Halls Near Boston

Alternative bingo halls in the area that you may be interested in visiting include:

• Roman Bank Bingo Skegness
• North Parade Bingo Skegness
• Buzz Bingo Lincoln

Everywhere else in the county sits in our Lincolnshire bingo directory.