House of Vodka

History

A late bar and bistro at the top of Botchergate, with Arches next door on the Woodrow Wilson side, a couple of doors from the old Walkabout building and in the same modern stretch as Deja Vu and Ballers. Its own description is short and to the point: a bar and bistro offering food and vodka, a stone's throw from the station.

One pub-history database gives this unit a much longer run under other names: a County Ballroom, then Diamond Lill's in the 1970s, then Cassa Bar from 2007 to 2012, then the Tropeira Brazilian Bar from 2012, before House of Vodka took over in 2015. The council's gambling register agrees on that last date. It carries House of Vodka (Bar & Kitchen), 4 Botchergate, with a gaming machine notification served on 13 August 2015 by LCM Bars 2 Ltd, running indefinitely, which fixes the bar at this address from 2015 at the latest. Its exact opening date is not recorded.

Not to be confused with the Station Hotel's own County Ballroom at Court Square, a short walk away, which had its own separate life as the Blaze from 1986: Carlisle seems to have had at least two ballrooms trading under that name near the station within a generation of each other.

These days it runs Friday and Saturday nights only, big beats rather than background music, and it hosts and promotes club nights of its own alongside the DJ and dance events at Box Arena behind it on Portland Place; its Facebook page was still posting about a joint night there in September 2026.