Crown and Anchor Inn

Built

In local directories to 1925; first mentioned in 1814

Gone

Closed 20 June 1927

There now

Demolished 1979

Address

Crown and Anchor Lane, off Scotch Street

Where exactly

Placed from the Ordnance Survey grid reference, NY4013755962, in Historic England's gazetteer of the scheme's premises. The building has since been demolished.

The pub gave its name to the lane, not the other way round. John Elliott held it in the 1829 directory as the 'Crown and Anchor, Jollie's Lane', the older name for the lane, which was renamed Crown and Anchor Lane after the pub some time afterwards. Denis Perriam wrote it up for the Cumberland News on 29 June 2012, dating the first mention of the pub to 1814, and one record suggests it was the Turk's Head before that. The Cumberland News of 3 July 1992 says it stood on the right-hand side of the lane looking in from Scotch Street, and a book catalogue cover from around 1840 shows a woodcut of a shop on Scotch Street with the Crown and Anchor's own sign visible down the lane behind it.

It was a carriers' inn in 1829: John Bell left it for Alston and Kirkoswald, Robert Grieve for Alston, James Rae for Ecclefechan and Lockerbie, and William Batey and Robert Anson for Newcastle. W. Kirkup took over on 19 June 1847, and the Cumberland News's 1933 list of the two streets' licensed houses still has Wilfrid Kirkup there in the 1860s. In May 1850 the newly elected Carlisle Wrestling Committee held its first, quarrelsome meeting here, on a proposal to expel two of its own members, before adjourning to the Moulders' Arms.

P. Phillips signed the innkeepers' memorial of February 1867 for the Crown and Anchor, presumably the husband of the Mrs Philip Phillips who had it when the Carlisle Patriot advertised it on 29 December 1876 as an old established inn for sale. George Little, 56 and born at Dalston, is the innkeeper of the 1891 census.

It was rebuilt about 1897: the city council minutes for 1897-98 record that the architect, Mr H. Higginson, had deviated from the plans the council approved, building the ground floor rooms 9 ft 6 in high instead of the 10 ft the bye-laws required. The architect and the builder, Mr Bell, were summoned before the committee, and after hearing their explanation it agreed that no action be taken. The Cumberland News ran a piece on it on 31 July 1992 headed 'testimonial to sporting publican.'

In August 1913, when the Evening News called it the Crown and Anchor Hotel, Scotch Street, it still kept an ostler. He was James Wilkinson, 35, of John Street, Caldewgate, and he was found drowned in the Caldew at the Sauceries on Friday 22 August, when an eel-fisher's line caught his coat. The barman, Christopher Bainbridge, told the inquest that Wilkinson had come to work as usual that morning, and had not answered when called for his breakfast at nine; the jury returned an open verdict.

It was a Carlisle Old Brewery house when the scheme acquired it in August 1916, and the scheme's 1920 roll has a Crown & Anchor under English Street, which is probably this pub. A 1920s article on the city's pubs found three public rooms, each crowded, which the 1992 column took as a sign of a popular place with drinkers. The column thought the pub ceased trading in the late 1920s, and the Chief Constable's Annual Report for 1927 puts it exactly: it closed on 20 June 1927. The building was demolished in 1979; the column prints a drawing of the lane from the early 1970s, in which the white building on the far left was possibly where the pub stood.

86 other lost pubs stood within 250 m of here. See them on the map

Still serving, near where it stood

• Apple Tree

  City Centre
  80 maway

• Bordo Lounge

  City Centre
  90 maway

• The Kings Head

  City Centre
  100 maway

• Crown & Mitre Hotel bar

  City Centre
  110 maway