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Lost pub · Rickergate

Blue Bell Inn

Gone 1917

Gone
April 1917
There now
Carlisle Magistrates Court extension
Where exactly
Under the modern Magistrates' Court extension, which was the bus station for a time

Acquired by the scheme in 1916 and closed in April 1917. The site is under the modern extension to Carlisle Magistrates' Court, which may also cover part of the Scotch Arms next door; for a while the cleared ground was the bus station. Worth being clear about which Blue Bell this is, because at least one lost-pubs index has the two swapped: this is the Rickergate one that went in 1917. The Blue Bell Hotel on Scotch Street lasted until 1973, and the Blue Bell at Dalston is still open.

Edward Forster held it in the 1829 directory, and the Carlisle Journal put it up for sale in July 1832, noting Forster had by then been tenant for very nearly forty years. Joseph Trimble is named as victualler in the 1847 directory, and Dennis McCauley, a 28-year-old from Ireland, is the innkeeper of the 1861 census. A photograph reproduced in Carlisle: The Archive Photographs names J. Black as tenant, and by the 1891 census Jane Hope, 57 and from Kirklinton, was running the house.

Joseph Black, 30 and born at Great Orton, appears as innkeeper in 1901 and died at the Blue Bell Hotel on 21 October 1907, aged 36. The same Dennis McCauley later ran the nearby Scotch Arms Hotel, and in between opened the Star Music Hall on Rickergate, on 25 June 1877 -- one Rickergate entrepreneur across three ventures over several decades.

Sources

Location from geograph.org.uk. That's the building standing over it, not the exact doorway.

Also lost on Rickergate

Still serving, near where it stood

All the lost pubs