Lost pub · Botchergate

Mood

about 1998 to 2008

Opened: about 1998
Gone: Closed 2008
There now: Smiley's, after spells as Mint, the Bomb Shelter, Players Grill & Sports Bar and Poprooms
Address: 70 Botchergate

For a while this was the biggest night out in Carlisle, in a building that had started as the city's Co-operative headquarters. Botchergate revived in the late nineties, starting with the Woodrow Wilson and the Village cinema, and Mood came with that wave: a nightclub downstairs, a restaurant upstairs, and at one point a separate R&B room. At its height it pulled thousands of people a week, and the circular bar was notorious for how long it took to get served.

The Cumberland News named it Britain's Entertainment Venue of the Year in June 2001. It closed in 2008 and the building stood empty for years. Mint opened in it in June 2018 with a rooftop terrace at the back overlooking Collier Lane, a mojito bar, stiltwalkers and thirty jobs; by the following year the building was being described as the Bomb Shelter. CAMRA tell it differently, with Mint arriving in 2015 and a full refurbishment in 2017 reopening the place as Players Grill & Sports Bar; the gambling register adds Poprooms, running there until January 2020.

The names are certain, the order is not. The site's own pub database adds a further name to the chain, Timmy's, between Mint and the club's current identity. Since at least 2021 it has been Smiley's, a four hundred capacity club, with the same operator named on the licence as the man who opened Mint. The building has a name of its own: the council's 2012 conservation appraisal calls it the former Boustead's building, photographs it with vegetation growing out of the gutters, and lists it as a large vacant property that could be subdivided. That was four years after Mood closed and six before Mint opened in it.

Sources

Also lost on Botchergate

All the lost pubs