City Centre, Carlisle
Box Arena
Eight-hundred-capacity events arena off Botchergate, licensed and running club nights, bare-knuckle boxing and touring shows since 2023.
- Today
- See opening hours
- Address
- 7 Portland Place, Carlisle CA1 1RL
History
Not a pub, but a licensed room big enough to matter: an indoor multifunctional events arena, in its own words, holding about eight hundred, tucked behind Botchergate in the Portlands development.
The room is older than the name. Its licence, PL120, runs back through a change of premises name in 2014 and transfers in 2015, 2017, 2021 and 2022, so something else was licensed in this unit for at least a decade before. The last transfer, on 4 October 2023, is when Box Arena took it over.
Since opening it has run an unusually wide programme: club nights and touring dance brands, a September weekender, and bare-knuckle fighting, where the Cumbrian Spartan Ring Warz nights sell out on the card rather than the venue. Ticket agents classify it variously as a nightclub and as a theatre, which tells you how hard it is to pigeonhole.
It sits in the same block as the Englishgate Plaza bars, and between them they make the top of Botchergate the densest licensed corner in the city.
- Open late
- Live music
Opening hours
| Mon | Unknown |
| Tue | Unknown |
| Wed | Unknown |
| Thu | Unknown |
| Fri | Unknown |
| Sat | Unknown |
| Sun | Unknown |
No opening hours: it opens for events. Check the listings for whatever is on.
Hours are kept by hand and change without warning. Ring ahead if it matters.
More like this
Nearest to here
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90 maway
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90 maway
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110 maway
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110 maway
56 lost pubs stood within 400 m of here. See what used to be around it
Sources 4
- Cumberland Council licensing register: premises licence PL120, transferred 4 October 2023, at Unit 7 Portlands, Botchergate
- Skiddle: Box Arena, 7 Portland Place, capacity 800
- UK Theatre Web: Box Arena, Carlisle, opened 2023
- BOX ARENA on Facebook: an indoor multifunctional events arena in Carlisle city centre
Open question
What we don't know yet
What was licensed at Unit 7 Portlands, off Botchergate, before Box Arena took it over in October 2023? The licence history runs back to at least 2014 under other names.
If you know the answer, or where it might be found (an old photograph, a family story, a document), tell us and it goes into the history above.