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Lost pub · English Street

The Bush Hotel

1686 to 1918

Built
Rebuilt 1878 to a design by C.J. Ferguson; the inn itself is recorded from 1686
Gone
Ceased as a pub 1918-19; the building survives
There now
The NatWest bank on English Street, the building it moved into in 1877
Address
45-46 English Street
Where exactly
Placed on English Street from the position of pubs still standing there. Somewhere on this street, not this doorway

The oldest name in this archive, and the best-documented landlord succession in it. A Simon Tate of the Bush Inn appears in 1686, and the Bush stood on Scotch Street until 1783, when it moved to English Street and became the city's principal coaching inn. The keepers run in an almost unbroken line for more than a century. James Fairburn had it in the 1794 directory. John Fletcher was innkeeper by 1803 and handed over to Thomas Wilson in May 1810.

Jollie's directory of 1811 has Wilson in place and notes that the mail and other coaches depart from here, which is the pub's whole significance in one line. Wilson was still there in 1821, Ralph Holmes from 1822 to 1829, and a R. Holmes of the Bush -- presumably the same man, or a relative -- wrote to Lord Lowther on 17 October 1831 asking for financial help after the Bush was damaged during that year's election, citing an earlier case in which the Coffee House's own windows had been broken; Benjamin Breach in the 1851 census, Joseph Wootton taking it on in 1876, A.

C. Kirkpatrick managing in 1882, and in 1901 Robert Clarke managing for the proprietor Johnson Carr. Then the viaduct took it. In 1860 the Bush stood where the Viaduct now joins English Street, opposite Devonshire Street. When the viaduct was built between 1875 and 1877 a hole was knocked through English Street to reach it, the old inn was in the way, and the Bush moved into a new building on the other side of the gap, facing a different way.

That building carries the date 1877 high on the corner of English Street. It was described in the Carlisle Journal of 24 May 1878 and is usually credited to C. J. Ferguson. Two photographs survive: one taken in 1876, immediately before the old inn was demolished for the viaduct, and one from the late 1890s showing its replacement. So both Bushes can be seen. It lasted forty years. The pub ended in 1918 or 1919, bought out by the state.

And that building is still there. It is the NatWest bank on English Street. This entry spent a long time unable to choose between two accounts, one saying the Bush became a bank in July 1922 and the other saying it was demolished in 1930 with the Gaol Tap and the Pine Apple. The bank is right, and the reason the question was hard is that both are true of different buildings: the Bush of 1783 to 1877 stood on ground that was cleared, and the Bush of 1877 onwards is the bank.

The 1930 demolition took the City Arms at 41-42, a few doors along, for which Woolworths was built in 1932. The lesson for this archive is worth keeping. Two sources contradicting each other about one pub can both be accurate if the pub moved, and a pub that moved leaves a trail that looks like a disagreement. One more thing happened here, and it is the strangest story attached to any building in this archive.

In March 1859 a large box arrived at the Bush addressed to a Mrs Louden. Nobody came for it. It sat at the hotel for close on a year, and when it was finally opened in February 1860 it held a small coffin, and in the coffin the body of a child. The investigation that followed reached Newcastle, Hartlepool, Glasgow, Greenock and New Zealand. It is the subject of an episode of the Carlisle Times & Crimes podcast, Louden's Box: The Carlisle Coffin Mystery.

There's an earlier civic footnote too: in 1798, before the parish had a building of its own, Carlisle's Catholic congregation worshipped in a room in Fairbairn Buildings on West Walls, provided by a Mr Fairbairn of this hotel -- one of the city's earliest post-Reformation Catholic congregations meeting under a publican's roof.

Sources

Also lost on English Street

Still serving, near where it stood

All the lost pubs