Orchid Ballroom

The Orchid Ballroom in Purley was a palace of romance as well as dance. I used to love foxtrotting across the beautiful and large floor there, with some really top class big-band orchestras supplying the music.

I fell in love with my very first girlfriend there in October 1951. I was not yet 17; she was 22 but it mattered not about the age difference. She is now taken from this world but her memory will live on until I breathe my last.

Hi. I do not remember the Orchid Ballroom as I lived near Oxted. However, when it was an ice rink my parents met there (Mid 1930s). They both independently did ice dancing, and at an ice dance one day my father asked my mother to dance (and the rest, as they say, is history).