The Wembley Stadium Bowl and Starlight Restaurant was an entertainment and dining venue situated just west of the Empire Pool (now the SSE Arena) in

Wembley Park Wembley Park is a district of the London Borough of Brent, England. It is roughly centred on Bridge Road, a mile northeast of Wembley town centre and northwest from Charing Cross. The name Wembley Park refers to the area that, at its broadest ...

Wembley Wembley () is a large suburbIn British English, "suburb" often refers to the secondary urban centres of a city. Wembley is not a suburb in the American sense, i.e. a single-family residential area outside of the city itself. in north-west Londo ...

, north-west

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. In the early 1960s American-style

tenpin bowling Ten-pin bowling is a type of bowling in which a bowler rolls a bowling ball down a wood or synthetic lane toward ten pins positioned evenly in four rows in an equilateral triangle. The objective is to knock down all ten pins on the first roll o ...

alleys became popular in the UK. In 1962 a bowling alley and restaurant was built west of the Empire Pool. The Stadium Bowl boasted 24 bowling lanes. The name Starlight for the restaurant was probably inspired by the Starlight Dance held in the neighbouring Empire Pool on 17 October 1959, which was one of the first popular music events held at Wembley. Tenpin bowling competitions were held at the Stadium Bowl, some reported on

Pathé Pathé or Pathé Frères (, styled as PATHÉ!) is the name of various French people, French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest ...

newsreels. One of these was the London International Matchplay tournament, which ran at Wembley from 1962 to 1972, before moving to the Airport Bowl in 1973. In 1966 the cup for the Coca-Cola Bottlers International Masters Championship was presented to winner John Wilcox of the USA by England football captain

Bobby Moore Robert Frederick Chelsea Moore (12 April 1941 – 24 February 1993) was an English professional footballer. He most notably played for West Ham United, captaining the club for more than ten years, and was the captain of the England natio ...

, whose team had just won the World Cup. The general manager in the early 1970s was called Ralph Miller. The tenpin bowling craze declined relatively quickly and had largely died out by 1972. The Stadium Bowl became a 15-court squash centre in November 1974, hosting the

British Open Squash Championships The British Open Squash Championships is the oldest tournament in the game of squash. It is widely considered to be one of the two most prestigious tournaments in the game, alongside the World Squash Championships (prior to the establishment of ...

from 1975 to 1980. It has since been demolished.

References

{{Coord, 51, 33, 29.13, N, 0, 17, 3.53, W, scale:3125_region:GB, display=title Restaurants in London Entertainment venues in London