The Black Lion

Gone

Licence withdrawn September 1867

There now

Not established; Irish Damside itself has gone

Address

Foot of Irish Damside, at Irishgate Brow (2 Irishgate Brow in 1847)

Where exactly

At the foot of Irish Damside, where it met Irishgate Brow beside the railway, from the descriptions of 1856 and 1861 and the Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1865. The street has gone; the pin marks roughly where it was, not the building. The position is approximate.

A railwaymen's pub at the bottom of Irishgate Brow, where Irish Damside ran north beside the tracks, just west of the old Irish Gate below the castle. The papers give it three addresses, Irish Damside, Irishgate Brow and Caldew Bridge, but they are one house: Thomas Emmerson is named at all three within eighteen months.

The railway nearly took it at the start. In February 1847 the Caledonian's directors sold off the building materials of the houses they were clearing at Ritson's Lane and Irish Dam Side, among them seven tenements on the Irish Dam 'bounded on the east by the Black Lion public-house' and, a few lots on, the Britannia. The Black Lion was left standing, with David Ivison its keeper at 2 Irishgate Brow in that year's directory. The Richardson family owned it, and ran a dairy next door.

Its customers came off the line. In March 1852 Thomas Emmerson was found with company in at three on a Sunday morning, two soldiers among them, and told the bench that engine-men who came in off the night trains put up at his house. In May 1853 his wife held a 'tea party' that began at eight and was still going at nearly four; when the police turned the company out, she let them back in by the dozen. The bench let her off with a reprimand, because her husband was 'at present from home under circumstances of a very painful nature'.

That November Emmerson was fined 5s for Sunday drinking. He protested that there was not a more orderly house in Carlisle and that he would rather it cost him £100 than pay, and then, in the paper's words, cooled down a little and paid. In August 1854 the house was to let, and that December Richard Richardson's cowkeeping business next door, with a byre for six or eight cows, was sold at the inn 'adjoining the premises'.

George Winter came next. In August 1855 he umpired a £50 quoits match in the yard of the Crown in Botchergate for Thomas Coats of the Golden Quoit, who won by two shots. A year later the Mayor told him at the brewster sessions that the court knew cock-fighting went on in his house and that his licence would be suspended next time. Winter said nothing in his defence. That November the council told the Caledonian it would take over 'the road leading north from the Black Lion inn, Irish Damside' for £23: the railway now ran right past the door.

From 1858 the house was let through John Nicholson of the Jovial Hatters on Wood Street, and its tenants rarely stayed long. Alexander and Ellen Marshall had it in 1860 and 1861. One Sunday morning in July 1860 Ellen found a militia pensioner's tunic and three medals dumped by 'the arch near to my door', after a soldier had walked out of the barracks in another man's coat. The next March the bailiffs came for the rent. Ellen met the first of them on the stairs and 'brust his mouth', and all three were kicked out.

When the landlord, Mr Richardson, fetched the agreement showing half a year's rent payable in advance, Ellen promised to 'have satisfaction out of such rogues as the landlord'; the Marshalls agreed to leave within the week, and a few days later the Black Lion was advertised to let, 'adjoining the Caledonian Railway'. In June 1862 Robert Maclean was summoned after a customer who had left his watch with him for 1s 6d at two in the morning wanted it back and was knocked down and kicked insensible; Maclean's witnesses said the customer struck first and that Mrs Maclean was found bleeding from the mouth. Two policemen had looked in at four, drunk a pint each, and gone.

The house was to let again in 1863 and 1866. Andrew Wallace took it at Candlemas 1866 and was before the bench three times inside the year. His Sunday company were railway labourers, a lodger, and 'a fireman and an engineman who had just come from Glasgow'. The county court heard that year of a tanner who had bought two pigs in the Black Lion from a man too drunk to know what he was doing; the seller's wife refused to hand them over 'and gave him nothing but abuse'.

That December an inquest sat in the Black Lion on Thomas Richardson, a brakesman of Collier's Lane, killed in the Caledonian goods yard on a Sunday night while uncoupling the wagons of a train that was still moving. His mates heard him cry out and found him two yards from the rails. One of them had never been given a copy of the company's rules; the other said the rules forbade uncoupling a moving train. A juryman said the rules were 'neither use nor ornament' to the brakesmen, 'merely provided to screen the company'. The verdict was found dead.

J. Wallace signed the innkeepers' memorial against the Permissive Bill for the Black Lion in February 1867, and that September, at the adjourned licensing day, the justices took the licence away from A. and J. Wallace of the Black Lion, Irishgate Brow: the Chief Constable said the house was kept 'in a most disorderly and disgraceful manner', with prostitutes 'its occupants at all times of the day and night', and the Deputy Mayor said the bench owed a duty to society.

It is not in the directory of 1873. In 1891, when the Hound and Otter lost its licence, the Carlisle Journal listed about twenty houses gone from the streets round Annetwell Street, seven of them at the Irish Damside alone: the Black Lion, the Oddfellows' Arms, the Ship, the Victory, the Fox and Grapes, the Golden Lion and the Farmers' Arms.

Not to be confused with the Black Lion at Durdar, south of the city, or the one at Hethersgill, both of them later on the State Management Scheme's roll.

Photograph

Also lost on Irish Damside

• Farmer's Arms

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

Still serving, near where it stood

• Joiners Arms

  Caldewgate
  210 maway

• Cumbria Indoor Bowls Club

  Denton Holme
  300 maway

• The Boardroom

  City Centre
  310 maway

• The Brickyard

  City Centre
  330 maway