The Room, George Street: Hull's Late-Licence Legend

Some Hull nights finished at 2am. Nights at The Room didn't. If you went out in town in the 90s, there's a fair chance you remember coming back down George Street with your ears ringing and the sky already going light, wondering where the last few hours went. For a lot of us, The Room was where the night properly started.

Where it all started

The Room sat at 82 to 88 George Street, bang in the middle of town. Its early history is a bit tangled, and even the old trade directories can't quite agree with themselves. Hull historian Paul Gibson, who has traced the city's clubs through decades of Yellow Pages listings, records a bar at 86 to 88 that started life as Room 1795 in 1992, with the club growing into Room 82-88 by the middle of the decade before it settled on plain old The Room. Most people just called it Room.

The team behind this year's revival nights put the opening at 1991 and credit Hull nightlife figure Dave Mays with starting it. Whichever date you go with, it was an early 90s Hull original, and it got going right as the house music boom was taking hold of the whole country.

Late licence, long nights

What made The Room different was the clock. It's remembered as one of the first clubs in the country to get a late licence, and that changed everything. While the rest of town was spilling out onto the pavement, The Room was only just warming up. People travelled from across the north of England for it, which tells you something, because nobody ends up in Hull by accident.

The music was the draw: deep US house, garage and acid jazz, played by DJs who took their records seriously. The revival crew name-check nights like Select, Origin, Recoil, Scuba and Quench, and if one of those names just took you straight back to a hot, dark dancefloor at four in the morning, you're in the right place.

Bands on George Street too

It wasn't all DJs. In the mid 90s The Room doubled as a proper gig venue, and the listings from 1996 and 1997 read like a Britpop scrapbook. Catatonia and Space shared a bill there in April 1996. Kula Shaker played that June, just as they were about to go huge. Sneaker Pimps, Republica, Death In Vegas, Porcupine Tree, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and even ABC all came through within about a year of each other. Plenty of Hull people will have a ticket stub from one of those nights in a shoebox somewhere.

What a night at Room felt like

This is the bit you can't look up. Ask people about The Room and they don't talk about dates, they talk about the feeling: the queue on George Street, the bass you could feel before you got through the door, the dark, the heat, and the way the night just kept going after every other club in town had put the big lights on. People still talk about walking out into daylight and heading for whatever was open.

It had a different crowd to LA's, too. If Lexington Avenue on Ferensway was the big, loud, everyone-you-know night out, The Room was where the people who cared about the records ended up. Plenty of us did both in the same weekend, and our legs still haven't forgiven us.

When the doors shut

The Room closed in the early 2000s, and it left a gap in Hull's nightlife that took a long time to fill. George Street is still there, and you'll still walk past the spot on a night out, but it's not the same without a queue outside at midnight and a bassline coming through the wall.

It made our list of things you could do in 90s Hull that you can't now, and it's one of the places people bring up first whenever Hull's old clubs come up in conversation. Err nerr, they don't make them like that any more.

Back in The Room

The good news is that nobody's forgotten it. A revival series called Back in The Room starts at Social on Humber Street on Friday 27 November 2026, with original DJs playing deep US house and garage on original vinyl. If you're going, dig out your dancing shoes and maybe book the Saturday off.

And we want your Room memories. Who did you go with? Which record got every hand in the air? Did you ever make it out before the sun came up, or were you a proper lock-in merchant? Tell us in the comments.

We put it on a tee

The Room's logo was as recognisable as the club itself: those cobalt-blue bubble letters with the pale blue glow round them. We've redrawn it and put it on the men's Room print t-shirt, the fitted women's Room print t-shirt and a fleece-lined Room print hoodie, so you can wear it round town again. No late licence included, sadly.

Just so you know, 'Ulltmate isn't connected to the club, its owners or the revival nights. We're from Hull, we loved the place, and we didn't want the name to disappear.

The Room FAQs

Where was The Room nightclub in Hull?

At 82 to 88 George Street in Hull city centre (HU1 3AB).

When did The Room open?

Accounts differ. The team behind the Back in The Room revival nights say it opened in 1991. Hull trade directories record the bar at 86 to 88 George Street as Room 1795 from 1992, with the club listed as Room 82-88 by the mid 90s.

What music did The Room play?

Mainly house, garage and acid jazz, with a strong lean towards deep US house. In 1996 and 1997 it also put on gigs from bands including Kula Shaker, Catatonia, Space and Sneaker Pimps.

When did The Room close?

In the early 2000s. It was still listed as a nightclub in 2001, offering house, trance and a funk lounge.

Is there a Room revival night?

Yes. Back in The Room, the first in a series of revival nights, is at Social, 63 Humber Street, Hull on Friday 27 November 2026.