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Lost pub · Annetwell Street

Saracen's Head

1800 to 1916

Opened
1800
Gone
Shut for rebuilding in 1916; reopened with its neighbour as the Irish Gate Tavern, October 1917
There now
Castle Way. The whole north side of the street went in 1972-73
Address
1 Irishgate Brow
Where exactly
Placed from the Ordnance Survey grid reference, NY3965856060, in Historic England's gazetteer of the scheme's premises. The building has since been demolished.

The first half of a merger. The Saracen's Head was trading on Annetwell Street by 1800, at the junction with Irishgate Brow, and was mentioned in the Carlisle Journal in 1809. It was very probably kept by Thomas Gibbons, an innkeeper in Irishgate in 1811, whom Parson and White's directory of 1829 gives at the Saracen's Head, Irishgate Brow. M. Bewley signed the innkeepers' memorial of February 1867 for it, and Kelly's directory of 1906 gives it as 1 Irish Gate Brow, under W. E. Bell, which fits the corner placing.

It was popularly known as the Blazing Barrel, at least by the 1991 account; a News and Star caption of 1952 gave the name to the Black Bull instead. The Cumberland News of 27 September 1991 captioned a photograph of it about the turn of the century with the nickname, and a week later, on 4 October, explained it: a red glass barrel above the front entrance, lit by gas. The column's writer took the adjoining house for the Old Black Bull Hotel (William Skelton, 1901 directory); the city picture historian Jim Templeton told him that the Black Bull was just round the corner into the entrance to Devonshire Walk and looked out over the River Caldew and the brewery. It is last in the directories in 1914.

The late John Waddell had been its licensee for many years (the paper gives no street, but no other Saracen's Head is recorded in the city). In August 1916 the Cumberland News reported that his youngest son, Private Gavin Waddell of the Border Regiment, a bomber who had enlisted at the outbreak of the war, had been killed by a sniper, 'one of the first over the top'. That same month, on 4 August, the scheme bought the Saracen's Head, a Carlisle Old Brewery house.

The Board bought the Black Bull Vaults next door on the 23rd, closed both, and took out the wall between them to make one large pub. The closure was for rebuilding: the Board's report of 1 November 1916 does not count either house among the twenty Carlisle licences it had extinguished, but lists the Old Black Bull and the Saracen's Head together among seven houses recommended for 'very large alterations', and the job took nearly a year rather than the four months forecast.

It opened as the Irish Gate Tavern in October 1917 and ran until 1971. So this is a pub that was closed in order to be enlarged, which is a different thing from most of the closures around it, and the reason the Board is remembered for building as well as shutting. Castle Way went over the whole north side of the street in 1972-73.

Sources 13

Also lost on Annetwell Street

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

Still serving, near where it stood

All the lost pubs