The Halston

History

Opened Hotel opened 2014; building 1916

Building

1916, the former General Post Office

Style

Neo-classical

Became a hotel

2014

Restaurant and bar

Penny Blue, since 2014, previously the Belted Bar to 2017

Carlisle's General Post Office went up on Warwick Road in 1916, the very year the state took over every pub in the city. While the government was nationalising the drink trade, this handsome neo-classical GPO, one of the city's celebrated Edwardian landmarks, was being built. A century later it pours cocktails.

It isn't the only former Carlisle post office pulling pints. The Last Zebra on Lowther Street stands on the site of an 1863 post office that became the country's first State Management pub in 1916, the year the post office moved out to here. This one, the grander replacement, took over the job and ended up a hotel bar itself. Two different post office buildings, two different second lives.

It was converted into an aparthotel in 2014 with the architectural detail restored, which makes a set of four grand civic conversions on this site: a bank (the Griffin), a racecourse grandstand (the Turf), a Co-op (the Woodrow Wilson) and a post office.

The dining and drinking side trades as Penny Blue: tapas and grill dishes, contemporary cocktails, fine wine and local beer, breakfast through to dinner. It opened under that name with the hotel in 2014, traded for a spell as the Belted Bar until 2017, and has been Penny Blue since. The room is a marble-top bar with banquette seating and an open kitchen, open daily from noon, until midnight on Friday and Saturday nights and to ten on Sunday. Vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options are named specifically.