Lost pub · Devonshire Street

The Friars Tavern

Gone about 1999

Built: In local directories from 1873
Gone: Renamed FT's, 1999
There now: Thin White Duke, the third name since, still trading
Where exactly: Placed from the Ordnance Survey grid reference, NY4018655761, in Historic England's gazetteer of the scheme's premises. The building's use in 2018: public house (Thin White Duke).

The one with the tunnel, and a name that outlived itself twice over. A passage is said to run from here to the Cathedral, and the same story attaches to the Boardroom a few streets away, which is usually a sign that a city has one tunnel legend and several pubs willing to claim it; Devonshire Street sits about right for it, all the same. In 1996 the landlady, there since the year before, said she had knocked out some breeze blocks in the cellar to see: it ran about 20 metres, under Friars Court Lane to the car park, and was then completely blocked. Historic England's gazetteer dates the building itself to the 1830s, and a carved mural survives at the entrance.

As a pub it is in the local directories from 1873, against a widely repeated 1879, with Letitia Allmand, 30 and born at Oswestry, recorded as hotel manageress in the 1901 census. The State Management Scheme took it on in August 1916, or September by Historic England's gazetteer; the Cumberland News of 9 September 1916 puts it on the list of houses acquired in the previous week, which favours September. It held out longest against change: by 1966 it was the only house in the whole scheme still kept entirely for men.

It had its share of ghost stories: the Carlisle Journal called it 'haunted' in 1964, and the Evening News and Star ran a 'spine-chilling' feature on it in 1970. By 1973 the neighbouring Friars Court had become a wine store. The scheme sold the pub to Whitbread in April 1973 for £20,100, one of the individual lots rather than part of a group. It reopened after a facelift in 1974, a retiring landlord wrote a 'why I called time' piece for the paper in 1977, and the Cumberland News found 'a new feel for an old friend' in 1990.

It kept the Friars Tavern name until 1999, then went through FT's (1999-2003) and the Glasshouse (2003-2010) before becoming the Thin White Duke in 2010, which is trading there now.