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Lost pub · Scotch Street

The Duke's Head

1746 to about 1848

Built
1746
Gone
Gone from the directories after 1848
There now
Unknown
Where exactly
Approximate. Placed from Rawlinson's 1850 Board of Health plan, which shows it on the west side of Scotch Street at the corner of Rosemary Lane, just north of the Blue Bell.

The older of Carlisle's two lost Duke's Heads, dated by a striking eighteenth-century citation: Baron Clarke's Notebook of 1746, p36, records 'Adam Elliot at ye Duke's Head in Carlisle', the same year and the same source as the Crown and Mitre's own Jacobite-era citation. Rawlinson's plan of 1850 for the General Board of Health names it on the corner of Scotch Street and Rosemary Lane at the north end of the block that ran down to St Alban's Row, with stables and lofts behind it along the lane and the Blue Bell next door to the south. Not the Duke's Head on Corporation Road.

The Universal Directory of 1793-98, p631, records it kept by a Sowerby, and Hutchinson's History of Cumberland, printed in 1794, lists the Duke's Head among the city's inns 'much resorted to by travellers'; the Corporation Road house was still decades away, so this is the one he meant. The Carlisle Journal of 27 June 1801 names Mrs Isabella Sowerby as innkeeper. Jollie's directory of 1811 names it among the principal inns of Scotch Street, kept by Daniel Snowden, and the 1821 New Guide to Carlisle, p76, and the 1829 directory both name Margaret Snowden.

It was also the city's Excise Office, in 1811 and still in 1829, 'open once in 6 or 7 weeks, when the collector for Cumberland attends for the receipt of this branch of the public revenue'. And it was a carriers' inn: James Carruthers left it for Newcastle in 1811, and in 1829 J. Carruthers ran daily to Brampton from it, with Joseph Armstrong and John Taylor to Newcastle. It is in local directories to 1848, and one record carries it to 1851.

Photograph

Engraved plan of a block of buildings in Carlisle with lanes, yards and red drain lines; a red circle round the words Dukes Head at the top right corner of the block beside Rosemary Lane, and a red label reading Duke's Head
The Duke's Head at the corner of Rosemary Lane, with the Blue Bell Inn and Blue Bell Lane below it, on Robert Rawlinson's plan for the General Board of Health, 1850 Wellcome Collection, Public Domain Mark

Sources 9

Also lost on Scotch Street

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Still serving, near where it stood

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