The Wholepotato Room
This is a room of this house. It is nobody else's, it has no address apart from ours, and the walk to it stays under this roof. The casino is the chandlery's counting room, at the back of the ground floor, with four bedrooms directly above it.
From the desk under the stair you walk straight back along the passage, past the galley door, and the room is at the end. Thirty-five paces, all of it inside, which between December and March is the whole of the argument. The door is held by a member of staff for every hour it is open and it is the only way in: the chandlery's own back door to the lane was framed out in 2023 and the opening is plastered over.
- Hours Thursday to Sunday, eight in the evening until half past twelve
- Size Three tables and a counter with four stools
- Age 19, photo identification, every visit
- Dress Dry boots off at the mat. The hill is wet nine months a year.
The room
Three tables is what the counting room holds. On a Thursday in April one is open. Through August all three are, and on those nights heads are counted at the casino door, the room taking twenty-two and the house being timber from 1888.
It was built to hold money and books, so it is the solid corner of the house: the chimney stack is in the wall, the joists overhead are doubled, and the safe recess is still cut into the breast with its iron frame in place. The half door is hung open against the passage wall with the counting shelf on it. There is no music. The loudest thing is the stove in the stack, which is a real stove and is lit from November. The casino keeps a clock over the counter and the staff are told to give you the time the first time you ask.
About dress: boots off at the mat if they are wet, and that is all anybody is asked. The hill outside is wet for most of the year and the floor in there is the original pine.
Age and identification
In Nova Scotia the casino age is 19, which is a year above most of the world and catches people out, so the door says it twice. It is applied and no exception has ever been made, the guest directly overhead included.
Identification is checked every visit, not once per stay. That includes the guest who ate in the galley an hour earlier and spoke to the person now on the door. A passport, a Canadian provincial driver's licence, or a provincial photo identification card is accepted. A screenshot of a licence is not a licence, however good the screenshot is, and nobody has ever argued their way past that.
At no hour is anybody under 19 admitted to the casino, which covers the hours when the room is shut and being swept, and covers asking to see the safe recess. People do ask about the safe recess. There is a photograph of it in the hall.
Setting a limit
A limit is fixed on the casino floor by the member of staff running it. Say your figure before you sit down and it is written on the sheet and held to. Ask them to pick the figure and they will, and it will be under the one you had.
Stopping is arranged in person at the desk under the stair. Never in the counting room, never by telephone, never by email. A self-exclusion is signed at the desk under the stair, holds from that evening, and comes off only when you return to it yourself. The person at the counter cannot do it and will not try.
Credit is not given on the casino floor in any form, and no machine in this house gives out money. The nearest is on Lincoln Street, three minutes down and rather longer back up, and that hill has ended more evenings than any rule we could write.
This site is not a place to play
What there is is a room at the back of a house on Pelham Street, Lunenburg. Nothing more than that. The site describes a house and one room in it. No gaming, no wagers, no accounts, and not a cent of anybody's money.
To play you come up the hill to number 14, show identification at the door at the end of the passage, and sit down. There is one way in and this page is not any part of it.