NEHL - A cricket ground stood on the current Houghton Rugby Club ground from at least 1834 until 1901. This would make it one of the earliest cricket clubs in the North East, and is evidenced through contemporary newspaper reports from that year. A clipping from October 2nd 1834 details a match at the cricket ground between Houghton and Chester-le-Street, when a "very interesting game at this manly exercise is expected". This was a number of decades before ball games as a leisure sport became popularised.

The first map evidence we see of the ground was in the 1850s, when a bone mill featured in the south east end of the site. Mills like these converted bones from farm animals into agricultural fertiliser, so must have been quite a smell. In later years a small pavilion was built on the northern end of the ground, and later another slightly further south. It's unknown what buildings they may have used for facilities before this point.

Houghton CC became defunct in 1901, and was later utilised by Houghton Rugby Club as well as Houghton Dairy Bowls Club.