Lost pub · Houghton
The Far Boot
- Gone
- Closed 1920 or 1921; demolished 1925
- There now
- Demolished by 1924
- Address
- Houghton Town Head
- Where exactly
- Placed from the Ordnance Survey grid reference, NY4090160117, in Historic England's gazetteer of the scheme's premises. The building has since been demolished.
Known first from one sentence in a document about a different pub. The Grade II listing for the Near Boot on Whiteclosegate explains its odd name like this: it was called Near Boot because there were two Boot inns within a short distance of each other, and the other was called the Far Boot. The folk explanation of the Near Boot's name, that it comes from the near-side boot as you ride out of Carlisle, is still repeated by CAMRA and everyone who follows them. The Far Boot is the evidence against it, and it has been sitting in the listing all along.
The Far Boot was the Boot Inn at Houghton Town Head, the further of the two from the city, and it was trading before 1808. Parson and White's directory of 1829 lists it under Houghton as 'Beck Joseph, vict. Boot, Town head', the only Boot it gives in Stanwix parish that year; the house on Whiteclosegate may have been trading then as the Weary Traveller, a question set out on the Near Boot's page.
In February 1902 Edward Robson, for twenty-one years butler to Mrs Fell of the Knells, was granted a temporary licence to sell drink there. He may have been its last private landlord: Ed. Robson retired from the business in 1911, and the auctioneer W. L. Tiffen sold part of his furniture and effects at the inn on 1 August, a full-compass piano, bar utensils, poultry, hay and a pig among them.
It was certainly still licensed on 8 July 1916, when the Cumberland News's list of Cumberland Ward houses gives the Boot, Whiteclosegate, and the Boot, Houghton, one after the other. Its end is recorded several ways. The Cumberland News of 7 October 1916 reported the Far Boot Inn, Houghton, closed by the Board as a licensed house, and Historic England's gazetteer has it closing as early as July 1916. Other records have the scheme taking it in 1917, list it as number 77 on the scheme's roll of 1920, the Near Boot being number 78, and close it in 1920 or 1921. It was demolished in 1925, and it is gone from the Ordnance Survey map revised in 1924.
Sources 10
- Historic England list entry 1087704, for the Near Boot Inn
- Brewery History Society: the 1920 roll of Carlisle & District State Management Scheme pubs
- CARLISLE_PUBS_Ver_3.xls (Mike Tuer's pub database)
- CUMBERLAND_PUBS_4.xls (Cumberland pubs database)
- 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, 29 July 1911, p. 12: sale advertisement, Far Boot Inn, Houghton (via newspapers.com)
- The Cumberland News, 7 October 1916, p. 5: 'The Carlisle Experiment: Reconstruction of Inns' (via newspapers.com)
- W. Parson and W. White, History, Directory, and Gazetteer of the Counties of Cumberland and Westmorland (Leeds, 1829), p. 445: Houghton: Beck Joseph, vict. Boot, Town head (University of Leicester digital copy)
- Carlisle Journal, 4 February 1902, p. 3: licence transfers (via British Newspaper Archive)
Still serving, near where it stood
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1.7 kmaway
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2.1 kmaway
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2.1 kmaway
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3.1 kmaway