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Lost pub · English Street

The Citadel Tavern

Built
In the directories from 1920, on the site of the Wellington and the Three Crowns
Gone
Gone. Later Annabel's, then the City Diner
There now
The building survives; latterly Annabel's and the City Diner
Where exactly
Placed on English Street from the position of pubs still standing there. Somewhere on this street, not this doorway

One pub out of two. The scheme amalgamated the Wellington Inn at 37 English Street with the Three Crowns next door at 36, and the Citadel Tavern is what came out; it appears in the directories from 1920. The Wellington itself had form for changing its name: for a stretch either side of 1820 the same building traded as the Bull and Butcher, then the French Horn from 1826 to 1837 -- Joseph Purdie kept it as the French Horn and died in 1838, shortly after it became the Wellington in 1840 -- before settling on Wellington from 1840 until the 1916/17 amalgamation with the Three Crowns.

It was reconstructed in 1967. In December 1966 the Carlisle Journal ran a piece on it headed 'Ghost who came in for a pint', which is the sort of story every old city pub eventually acquires and which nobody has ever pinned down here. It later traded as Annabel's and then the City Diner. Not to be confused with the other Three Crowns, on Rickergate, which the Board closed in April 1916 and which stood where the Civic Centre is now.

A separate Carlisle Encyclopaedia entry, on the "A" page, gives Annabelle's on Lowther Street as opening in November 1986 and "formerly Citadel Tavern" — the same pub name, a different spelling of the nightclub (Annabelle's, not Annabel's) and a different street from the English Street building documented here. Whether that's the same transition recorded loosely, or a genuinely separate Citadel Tavern, hasn't been settled.

The site's own pub database gives a fuller run for the building's later life again: Citadel until 1986, then Yates Wine Lodge (1986-2008), then Annabel's (2008-10), then Outrageous (2010-19) -- a run that doesn't quite square with the City Diner name recorded above for the same 1986 transition. Whether City Diner and Yates Wine Lodge were the same conversion under two names, or one followed the other in quick succession, isn't settled here.

The site's own pub database also carries a separate row for a "Three Crowns... Citadel Tavern... English Street" spanning before 1801 to 1996, a closing date that fits none of the chain above -- whether that reflects a later closure this archive hasn't otherwise traced, or is simply the whole run bundled under one spreadsheet entry regardless of what the building was trading as at the time, isn't settled either.

Sources

Also lost on English Street

Still serving, near where it stood

All the lost pubs