Halifax · Est. 1908 · Licensed until 4amLive Thursday to Saturday · Club nights till late

The Vaudette. Still standing, still loud.

A variety palace built in 1908, a cinema, then a bingo hall, then empty for eighteen years. Since 2012 it has been the best-sounding room in West Yorkshire — six hundred and forty people, a sprung maple floor and a balcony you can see the whole stage from.
See what’s onHire the room
Doors7:30pm
On stage8:15pm
Last bell3am
On sale now

This month at the Vaudette

Everything currently on sale, in date order. Advance prices are shown and the door is two pounds more, which we would rather you did not pay.
Thu04Sep

Ama Boateng Quartet

Seated in the stalls, balcony open, no support act
Jazz · Seated
£18 advOn sale
Fri05Sep

Keep The Faith

Northern soul and Motown on original 45s, 10pm–3am
Club night
£8 advLast few
Sat13Sep

The Hollow Coast

+ Meridian Pale, then DJs on the floor until 2am
Indie · Live
£14 advOn sale
Fri19Sep

Brasswork

+ The Fettlers · doors 7, stage 8:15, curfew 11
Folk · Live
£16 advSold out
Sat27Sep

The Late Bill

House, disco and garage until 4am, Gods Bar open all night
Club night
£10 advOn sale
Tickets are held on the door in your name until half an hour before stage time. Under-18s are welcome at seated shows with an adult; club nights are 18+ and we do ask for photo ID.

A hundred and eighteen years of somebody making a noise in here

The Vaudette opened on 27 March 1908 with a bill of fourteen acts and a chorus of forty. It has been a variety palace, a picture house, a bingo hall and, for eighteen years, nothing at all. What survived every one of those lives is the room itself: the horseshoe balcony, the plaster proscenium, and a sprung maple floor laid for dancing that nobody ever got round to boarding over.

What eighteen dark years did to it

When the bingo closed in 1994 the building was left to the weather. By the time the trust got the keys in 2010 there was a hole in the roof over the stalls, the balcony was propped on scaffolding and the entire proscenium had been hidden behind a false ceiling since 1968 — which, as it turned out, is the only reason the plasterwork survived at all. Two years of work put the roof back, took out four hundred bingo seats, uncovered the maple and left almost everything else exactly as we found it. The gilt on the arch is original and deliberately unrestored: it is the colour a hundred and eighteen years actually makes, and no paint chart has it.
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