Lost pub · Harraby
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
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, and in that decade 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. It held one last event and was pulled down on 8 December 2003.