Catacombs Capacity?

[Orotava]

Unfortunately, I found Northern Soul the year after the Catacombs in Wolverhampton closed its doors.  Wish I`d gone but out of interest I wondered how many people could the club accommodate, was it always rammed, were folks turned away??

[Denbo]

Hang on, how big's a sardine can?

[Agentsmith]

well,..there are plenty on here to go at, to get an answer to your question..sardine can...probably appropriate!..i can't actually remember weather the last all-nighter was a ticket event or not...either way the place was rammed so, maybe 300?...i could be out by a good way and i wouldn't have put it past something like 700 trying to squeeze in there ( hence sardines!! ) somebody better placed than me, will give you a more accurate account. 

[Guest gordon russell]

this place was small and an akward shape........bit like two corridors with a small dance floor at the end.....bet it,ll be no more than two hundred max

[Guest MBarrett]

My time of going to the Catacombs was around 1970/71.

 

As per Agentsmith and GR above I would have said low hundreds. Certainly seemed to be rammed whenever I went there and definitely the first place I had been where the condensation dripped down from the ceiling. But likewise I don't remember particularly long queues or full houses. Perhaps I was just lucky!

 

Let's face it at that time it was a long long way from the mainstream music scene. I was aged 18/19 and new to Wolverhampton so I don't know what was going on in the schools and youth clubs - or what made people younger than me go there. I would love to hear from people who were that bit younger than me in those relatively early days of rare/"Northern" soul. What drew them to places like the Catacombs, how they were seen by the peers i.e. cool & edgy or WEIRD.

 

Back to numbers this web page says 5/600. If that is correct so be it - but it sounds on the high side to me.

 

https://raresoul.org.uk/hinckleysoulclub/catacombs.htm