‘Going round t’ Town’: mid-life women navigating belonging in Halifax’s night-time economy

Mid-life women (aged 50–65) engage with the night-time economy (NTE) in complex and underrepresented ways. While existing research centres on younger women, those in mid-life navigate space and place facing distinct challenges. This study examines how mid-life women experience belonging and exclusion within Halifax’s (UK) NTE. Based on seven months of anthropological fieldwork (2023–2024) with seventeen working-class women, the research draws on participant observation of Halifax’s ‘going round t’ Town’ circuit—a ritualized pub crawl through the town centre—to explore the spatial negotiations required for their participation in the NTE. It contends women’s sense of belonging is shaped by memory-based attachments to venues, prompting them to question whether they still ‘belong’ or are perceived as intruding on youth-oriented spaces. This dual positioning, both embedded and excluded, complicates their spatial agency. Key dynamics include strategic self-presentation to align with age-appropriate femininity, experiences of spatial invisibility, and bidirectional ‘othering’, where women both encounter ageism but also critique younger women’s drinking behaviours. Implicit boundaries, such as social surveillance, structure these spatial relationships. Memory functions as both a claim to belonging and a source of tension, revealing how age, gender, and class intersect to shape their experiences. There is nothing like revisiting your youth to make you feel old and past your prime. The last time I walked up the stairs to the ‘Acca’ was about thirty years ago, and as I stand in the queue for this iconic nightclub, my feet are killing me, and I am conspicuously aware that most of the patrons are in their twenties, or younger. But research, and curiosity, has tempted me to return to Halifax’s Acapulco Club, colloquially known as the ‘Acca’. I am just turning fifty, and as part of anthropological research, I find myself in the queue for ‘England’s oldest nightclub’. ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this’, I moan to key participant Cath. ‘Look, it’s only 75p for a drink. C’mon, it’ll be a laugh; we’re not going to let some young ‘uns put us off. We can always leave after a couple of drinks’, she asserts. Famous last words, I think silently, and climb up the stairs into the venue.