Lost pub · Houghton
The Far Boot
- Gone
- Closing date not recorded
- There now
- Not established
Known 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. That is the whole of the record. Historic England mention it in passing while describing its neighbour, and nothing else does.
No street number, no dates, no landlord, no photograph, and no account of when or why it went. It is filed here on Whiteclosegate because that is the road the Near Boot stands on and the Far Boot was the further of the two from the city, so it was somewhere out towards Tarraby or Houghton. That is an inference, not a fact. Meanwhile 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. September 2026 adds a second sentence to the record, from the scheme's own roll of 1920. It lists two Boots: number 77 at Houghton and number 78 at Tarraby. The surviving pub on Whiteclosegate stands in the Tarraby Conservation Area, so it is number 78, and this one was the Houghton house. That gives the Far Boot a village, and it makes it a State Management pub, which nothing in the listing note said.
Know anything about this one?
What's above is everything on file, and it isn't much. If you drank in it, or your family did, or you've a photograph of it, that's more than the records hold.