Newbottle Street, post office

Houghton's first post office was at No. 3 Sunderland Street from 1824. Around 1918 it moved to No. 48 Newbottle Street. In 1959 a new purpose-built post office was built at No. 12 Newbottle Street costing £35,000. The site had previously been occupied by a telephone exchange. Before that it had housed a shed for the horse-driven ambulance for Dene House Isolation Hospital. The new post office was built with yellow Lumley bricks from Fence Houses Brickworks and had pre-cast concrete floors. It had a concrete strong room and a telegraph room. The roof was layers of plywood, soft wood and felt.