We know this building better than almost any venue we play, because when we need footage that actually looks like the band, this is where we take it. Three of our bands have been filmed in that ballroom. You spend a day in a room with cameras running and you learn things about it that you would never pick up from one gig.
A miners’ institute that got its money back
The Memo was paid for out of the wages of the men who worked the pits around Newbridge - small weekly subscriptions, building an institute that opened in 1908, with the Memorial Hall added in 1924 for the men who did not come back from the war. When the coal went in the eighties the building went with it, and it spent years as a drinking club with the art deco underneath the woodchip. A BBC Restoration appearance in 2004 started the fightback, Heritage Lottery and Big Lottery money followed, and what stands now is a Grade II listed building with the 1920s detail properly brought back.
That history is not decoration when you are throwing a party in it. People from the valleys walk in and have something to say about the place, which does a lot of the work of getting a room talking before anyone has played a note.
The Ballroom
Parties happen in the Ballroom. It takes around 120 to 130 seated for a meal and up to 200 standing, it has a sprung dance floor, a licensed bar and a commercial kitchen next door that caterers can work out of.
The sprung floor is the thing worth knowing about. Most function rooms are concrete under carpet, and by eleven o’clock people’s legs have gone. A sprung floor keeps a crowd dancing noticeably longer, and it is the reason rooms like this were built for dancing in the first place.
Acoustically it is generous without being boomy. The ceiling is high, which matters as much as floor area for a band - it lets a loud song open out rather than bouncing straight back off a low ceiling into the front two rows.
Band size for the Ballroom
At 200 standing this is a room that takes a bigger band comfortably. We would suggest six to eight pieces for most parties here - vocals, guitar, bass, drums, keys, and a horn or two on top - and the room will take the full eleven-piece if the occasion is worth it.
We run in-ear monitors rather than floor wedges, so the level in the room is set at the desk rather than by however loud the band needs to be to hear itself. In a room where people end up close to the front, that makes a real difference to what the audience actually hears.
Watch what the room sounds like
Most venue pages ask you to take the band’s word for it. Here you can just look. The Brotherhood as an eleven-piece, The Sisterhood as a ten-piece and The Apple Tree Theory acoustic were all filmed in this room, along with The Joker and Uptown Funk. The whole set is on the Newbridge Memo video page.
Practical notes
Room hire in the Ballroom starts from around £40 plus VAT an hour with package rates for parties, so it sits well below the hotel end of the market for a room of this character. Confirm current rates and what is included directly with the venue.
On finish times, be straightforward with the Memo about what you want early. It is a listed building in a residential part of Newbridge, and UK noise law applies here as it does anywhere - late finishes are a conversation with the venue, not a given.
The Memo also runs a 446-seat art deco auditorium and a smaller function room for around 60, so a party that needs a separate space for a speech, a screening or a quieter corner has options in the same building. If you are looking at it for a wedding rather than a party, we have written that up separately.
Getting there
Newbridge sits on the A467 between Newport and Blackwood, about twenty minutes north of our base in Newport and forty from Cardiff. Newbridge railway station is on the Ebbw Valley line with direct trains to Cardiff and Newport, which is worth flagging to guests who would rather not drive.
The Brotherhood are a South Wales party band based in Newport, and the Memo is very much on home turf for us. Check availability or see more about how we approach parties.