Lost pub · Longtown
The Bush Hotel
- Gone
- Closed 2009
- There now
- Standing empty
- Address
- Bridge Street
- Where exactly
- Placed from the Ordnance Survey grid reference, NY3790268774, in Historic England's gazetteer of the scheme's premises. The building's use in 2018: unoccupied.
Not the Bush that stood on English Street in Carlisle; this one is Longtown's, on Bridge Street, and it is Grade II listed. Historic England's gazetteer dates the building to the early nineteenth century. It was trading by 1811, when Jollie's directory has the Bush kept by Thomas Porter; in 1829 Thomas Armstrong had it. At the compensation hearing of 1909 the police rated it one of the three best houses in the town, with a small stand-up bar that was 'more of an office', and an average of twenty-two customers between eight and ten at night.
The Board was in charge of it long before the October 1916 date the records give for the takeover. On 8 July 1916 the Cumberland News, listing the twenty-four licensed houses in the Longtown division, said that 'the seven in Longtown have been under the Control Board's management for about a year', run from the Board's Scottish office for the Gretna area. October is when Carlisle took them on: the Board's own report says that on 1 October 1916 the Carlisle management took over from the 'Scotch Control' the sixteen licensed houses in the Cumberland part of the Gretna area, all of them 'already under management'. The scheme sold the Bush to Greenall Whitley in April 1973.
It has been shut since 2009 (one record says November 2010). By 2014 it had become, in one visitor's words, an appalling eyesore, though some work had been done by then to hold it in a decent state and there was a ladder at an upstairs window, which suggested somebody still had an interest in it. It was still unoccupied in 2018. Longtown keeps the Graham Arms and the Tavern; this is the one it lost.
Sold to Greenall Whitley as part of Group 2, handed over on 4 April 1973. Who bought the rest
Sources 8
- co-curate.ncl.ac.uk
- SOLWAY_PUB_DIRECTORY_Excl_Carlisle_Ver1.xls (Solway CAMRA / Stirling's list of Cumberland public houses, 1829-1938)
- Historic England, Countering the 'deadliest of foes': public houses of the Central Control Board and the State Management Scheme, 1916-73 (Clare Howard, Research Report 89-2018): Appendix C, gazetteer of scheme premises
- The Cumberland News, 8 July 1916: 'First State tavern: to be opened by Lord Lonsdale', with the list of licensed houses in the Cumberland Ward and Longtown divisions (via newspapers.com)
- The Cumberland News, 4 November 1916, p. 5: 'The Control Board: progress of the Carlisle scheme' (E. C. Sanders's report of 1 November) (via newspapers.com)
- Carlisle Journal, 4 June 1909, p. 6: 'Cumberland Compensation Authority: the "principal" meeting' (via British Newspaper Archive)
- Jollie's Cumberland Guide & Directory (Carlisle: F. Jollie & Sons, 1811), pp. xxxiii-xxxiv: Longtown innkeepers and their signs (Google Books scan of the Bodleian copy)
- W. Parson and W. White, History, Directory, and Gazetteer of the Counties of Cumberland and Westmorland (Leeds, 1829), p. 408: Longtown inns and taverns (University of Leicester digital copy)
Also lost in Longtown
- The White Swan Hotel
- The Wheatsheaf Hotel
- The Scotch Arms Hotel
- The George & Dragon
- The Marquis of Granby
- Monkhouse's Spirit Vaults
6 other lost pubs stood within 250 m of here. See them on the map
Still serving, near where it stood
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60 maway
-
120 maway
-
130 maway
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4.6 kmaway