Penny Blue Food & Lounge, Carlisle

The Halston is housed in Warwick Road’s former General Post Office which opened on 27th February 1916. The site was previously Bartons Yard (which is where the bar/bistro gets its name from) and home to William Barton and his business partner Robert Tweeddale’s horse harness and coach manufacturing business, which also supplied horses for mail coaches during the 1830s-40s.In the early 1900s, construction company Laings won the contract to build the post office. It carved the fluted columns and intricate design of the building’s neoclassical facade with stone from Blaxter quarries in Northumberland. The building was impressive inside and out, with the horseshoe-shaped public counter on the ground floor made from the finest mahogany. The Warwick Road post office served the people of Carlisle for many years until it was closed in 2008.