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Lost pub · Corporation Road

The Duke's Head

1869 to about 1905

Built
Kept by the Graham family from the 1850s; in the directories from 1869
Gone
Sent for compensation as not needed, February 1905
There now
Not established. Historic England found its neighbours, the Golden Fleece and the Crown, still standing in 2018
Address
8 Corporation Road
Where exactly
Placed from the Ordnance Survey 25-inch maps of 1865 and 1924, as the house next to the Crown on the Golden Fleece side, between Historic England's grid references for those two. The position is approximate.

For half a century the Duke's Head was a family house. Isaac Graham kept it from the 1850s, his widow and then his daughter after him, and by the end the daughter owned it and lived on the rent. It stood on the north side of Corporation Road near the Rickergate end, in a short row with two other licensed houses, the Golden Fleece on the corner of Solway Street and the Crown, and the Malt Shovel faced it across the road. It is not the older Duke's Head on Scotch Street, a coaching inn that had gone from the directories by 1848.

It began as a beerhouse. In August 1858 an Isaac Graham, very probably this one, was among six beer-house keepers refused a spirit licence on account of deficient stabling, with Mary Kelly of the White Ox on the same road.

Isaac Graham signed the innkeepers' memorial of February 1867 for the Duke's Head. In January 1879 a reward was offered at the house for a lost white poodle answering to the name of Prince, and in July 1880 his son Oliver married Maggie Armstrong of Thursby at the register office. In March 1884 Isaac, then about 82, handed the licence to John Fisher, and at the same sitting the Barley Stack on Rickergate passed from James Fisher to a Mary Graham. Isaac's wife was called Mary, and it looks very like two families exchanging houses.

Fisher left one memorable trace. In March 1885 'John Fisher, Innkeeper', of the Duke's Head Inn, put his name to a newspaper testimonial for a magnetic knee cap: a bull had crushed one of his knees about six years before, for four years he could at times scarcely walk, and two years in the knee cap had made it as sound as the other. The Grahams never left the building. Isaac died at the Duke's Head on 30 May 1887, aged 85. In September 1892 the Barley Stack passed from Mary Graham to John Scurr, and by the following spring Mary held the Duke's Head licence herself.

She did not hold it long. Mary Graham died very suddenly in Corporation Road on 20 May 1893, aged 78, and was buried at Stanwix, the funeral leaving from the Duke's Head. In June the licence went temporarily to her daughter, Mrs A. Johnstone: Annie Elizabeth Johnson, wife of William Johnson, whose surname the papers spelled three ways. She was about fifty and had lived in the house since she was a girl.

Within a year she was in court. On Sunday 10 June 1894 two constables watched Sarah White of Solway Terrace knock at the back door of 'the Duke's Head beerhouse', as the Reformer called it, and be let in, the door bolted behind her. Five minutes later they met her in the passage with a pint of beer in a tin under her apron. One of them, a teetotaller, said he knew it was beer by the smell. Mrs White's account was that Mrs Johnson kept an eating house, and that on the Saturday night she had ordered cooked meat for her Sunday dinner, with some porter, and paid for both. Mrs Johnson had been too busy to see to the meat, so she was taking the porter home first.

Mrs Johnson and her brother, who had served the porter, told the same story, and Mrs Johnson said she had been forty years in the house and never had a complaint before. The Mayor said that an offence had no doubt been committed, but in view of the exemplary way the house had been conducted the case was dismissed, and the charge against the landlady was withdrawn, with a warning to be more careful in future.

The family was thinning out. Isaac's eldest daughter, Mary Forster, died at 3b Corporation Road in October 1898, aged 62. In September 1899 Annie herself was charged with being drunk on the premises, after a sergeant found her hanging on to the stair rail in an almost incapable state. Her solicitor said she had a weak heart and sudden attacks of illness, took spirits only as medicine, and had not had so much as half a glass of brandy that day, and the magistrates gave her the benefit of the doubt. In August 1901 Stow Graham, aged 48, very probably the brother who had served the porter, died at the Duke's Head.

By then Annie was letting the house rather than running it. She owned it, and let it to Jennings Brothers, the Cockermouth brewers, for £48 a year, and they put in tenants. In January 1905 one of them, Charles Basford, was fined £5 and costs for serving drink at midnight to some men who said they had driven in from Rockcliffe. It was a cold night, the constable said, and there had been no attempt at concealment: the men thought they were bona fide travellers, who could lawfully be served after hours.

The Chief Constable objected to the renewal of the licence, and in February 1905 the adjourned licensing sessions heard why. Detective-sergeant Pattinson had often seen betting men and street runners playing cards in the back room, and had watched them playing what he called 'darts', throwing rings on to a board. There was an inn next door, he said, three within 25 yards, twelve within 100 and eighteen within 200. Mr Errington, for the house, kept the court laughing. Throwing rings at a board was a very innocent thing, surely? 'It's innocent to look at,' said the witness. Were there no cards at the Police Office? 'Would you like a game?' asked the Chief Constable. 'I have no desire to be fleeced by anyone,' said Errington.

His serious point was the owner. The rent was Mrs Johnston's only income, he said, and if the licence was smashed she would have to go to the workhouse. One conviction should not end a licence that had perhaps stood for sixty years, and there were 28 fewer licensed houses within a quarter of a mile of the Town Hall than there used to be, with twice the population. The bench, under Sir Benjamin Scott, decided that the house was not needed in the neighbourhood, conviction or no conviction. It renewed the licence for the time being in the name of the tenant, Thomas McGlone, and sent the house to the county licensing committee to settle the compensation. The directories carry it until about 1905-06; other records end it in 1902-03.

Annie Johnson outlived the pub by thirteen years. She died on 17 August 1918, aged 75, 'only surviving daughter of the late Isaac Graham, Duke's Head Inn, Corporation Road', at Walker's Temperance Hotel on Lowther Street, the house of her niece. By then the Crown next door had been closed by the State Management Scheme, in 1916, and the Golden Fleece followed when the new Malt Shovel opened in 1928.

Kelly's directories of 1897 and 1906 set out the row: 2 the Golden Fleece, 4 a grocer's, 8 the Duke's Head and 10 the Crown. So the Duke's Head was number 8, next to the Crown on the corner side; a Cumberland News column of 1992, printing a photograph of the three pubs, numbers it 10. The Ordnance Survey's 25-inch map, surveyed in 1865, marks the Golden Fleece at the corner and only one more inn, a few doors west. The Crown and the Duke's Head stood next door to each other, so one of the two went unmarked, and the Duke's Head is probably that one, on the corner side of the marked inn: it was called a beerhouse in 1894, and the 1992 photograph has the Crown at the left, furthest from the corner. On the map revised in 1924 only the Golden Fleece is still marked.

Photograph

Old Ordnance Survey map of Corporation Road near Rickergate, with a row of houses along its north side, two of them lettered Inn, a red circle round the unlettered house beside the second Inn, and a red label reading Duke's Head
Corporation Road on the Ordnance Survey 25-inch map surveyed in 1865. The Golden Fleece is the inn on the corner of Solway Street; the other inn marked in the row is probably the Crown, and the Duke's Head most likely the house beside it, circled National Library of Scotland, CC BY 4.0
Old Ordnance Survey map of Corporation Road and Solway Street with a hatched row of buildings, Inn lettered only at the corner of Solway Street, a red circle round a house four doors along the row, and a red label reading Duke's Head
The same row on the 25-inch map revised in 1924, after the Duke's Head and the Crown had both closed: only the Golden Fleece, at the corner, is still marked as an inn National Library of Scotland, CC BY 4.0

Sources 22

Open question

A date we can't pin down

What became of the Duke's Head after February 1905, when its licence was sent to the county licensing committee for compensation? The outcome of that reference is still wanted, and other records end the house in 1902-03.

If you know the answer, or where it might be found (an old photograph, a family story, a document), tell us and it goes into the story above.

Tell us about The Duke's Head

Also lost on Corporation Road

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Still serving, near where it stood

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