The Cosmo Club

Built

Built as the Argyll Cinema in the mid 1950s, a dance hall by the 1960s

Gone

Demolished 8 December 2003

There now

Cleared

Where exactly

In Harraby. The exact spot isn't known, so the pin marks the district, not the building. The position is approximate.

The biggest thing Carlisle nightlife has ever had, and it is entirely gone. The building went up as the Argyll Cinema in the mid 1950s. It was granted a licence for roller skating and ballroom dancing in November 1960 and reopened as the Cosmo Rollarena, becoming a dance hall proper in that decade.

In the sixties the Cosmo was a regular stop for bands working their way up through the north before the M6 was finished. The Who played it. So did Pink Floyd and the Moody Blues. One man who was there put it plainly: you could go to the Cosmo on a Saturday night and watch a band that had been on Top of the Pops the Thursday before. It was where a generation of Cumbrian couples met, and the young farmers held their dances there.

Later it was a furniture business, a bingo hall and a roller-skating rink, and it was probably the Cosmo on Central Avenue that reopened around 1990 as a pub, the Avenue, which closed in May 2001: both are recorded as demolished in December 2003. It held one last event and was pulled down on 8 December 2003.

Also lost in Harraby

• The Golden Fleece Inn

1 other lost pub stood within 250 m of here. See them on the map

Still serving, near where it stood

• Arroyo Arms

  Harraby
  0 maway

• Harraby Catholic Club

  Harraby
  640 maway

• The Auctioneer

  Rosehill
  650 maway

• Creighton RFC

  Harraby
  780 maway