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Lost pub · Botchergate

The Golden Quoit

1847 to 1917

Opened
1847
Gone
Closed 1917, as the Railway Tavern
There now
Shops and flats of the late twentieth or early twenty-first century
Address
37 Botchergate (21 in the 1840s; 33 and 35 after about 1905)
Where exactly
Placed from the Ordnance Survey grid reference, NY4036055565, in Historic England's gazetteer of the scheme's premises. The building has since been demolished.

At 37 Botchergate by the numbering of 1873 to 1901 (21 in the 1840s, and 33 and 35 after the street was renumbered about 1905), on the east side of the street between Mary Street and Portland Place, and older than any of its better-known names: it was the Indian King before 1821. Records of the 1840s give Isaac Newton both as a name for the house, from 1844, and as its publican in 1847. It was the Andrew Marvel from 1847, and an 1850 newspaper advertised the Andrew Marvel for sale. A Cumberland News column of 13 September 1991 adds that it was apparently once known as the Saddle Inn, a name kept in the adjoining Saddle Lane, seen to the left of the pub in its photograph.

It traded as the Golden Quoit from about 1855, and the name fitted its landlord: in August 1855 Thomas Coats 'of the Golden Quoit inn', a champion quoiter of 34, beat John Rennie of Alva by two shots in a £25-a-side match in the yard of the Crown further along Botchergate. In the early 1850s it was a training house for the city's foot-racers: William Hind trained there for his races at the Todhills in 1851 and 1852, and Joseph Whitehead, lately of Oldham, took up his quarters there in 1852.

From 1861 it was the Railway Tavern. A second Cumberland News column, of 29 November 1991, says the city council minutes for 1867-68 record approval of a plan for an addition to the bar, and both columns have it first in the directories in 1869; its keepers there run from Mrs Mary Graham in 1873 to James H. Tiffin in 1914. On 21 June 1890 PC Mooney threw a Border Regiment soldier out of the Railway Tavern and was struck and kicked for it.

In July 1891 the tenant, John Francis Wallace, was convicted of allowing gaming. The North Cumberland Reformer's report of the case, heard on 24 July, names the informer as an electrician from Birmingham, lately of Dublin, who would not say whether he belonged to a vigilance committee. Sergeant Scoon had found seven men playing cards round a table in a back room, and on every visit a bell had been rung; the main entrance was from Botchergate but there was another in Barnes Yard, its door hidden from the street, and Sergeant Parker said that a little girl stationed in the passage used to run into the bar to give the signal until he spoke to the landlord.

The card players, a fishmonger, a grocer and a railway guard among them, said they had been playing only for 'honours'; Wallace was fined 40s and costs, without the licence being endorsed.

At the Brewster Sessions that September the police opposed renewal. The Chief Constable said Wallace had allowed gaming, that the pub's construction and position meant it was not under proper police supervision, and that it was no longer needed. The city justices refused four licences that year, the Railway Tavern's with those of the Hound and Otter, the King's Arms and the Grapes, but it was the only one of the four to win its appeal at the Quarter Sessions that October, which is why it traded on.

The 1891 census records John Wallace as innkeeper of the 'Railway Hotel', Botchergate, and Kelly's directory of 1894 still has 'Railway tavern, Jn. F. Wallace, 37A Botchergate', listed separately from the Midland at 12.

The house was rebuilt in 1897. At the licensing sessions that September the Chief Constable told the magistrates that the Railway Tavern in Botchergate had been replaced by a new house, 'a great improvement in the city', and the council minutes for 1897-98 record a statement from the owners, the County Trading Company, that the cellar was being flooded through a defective drain; the Inspector of Nuisances was empowered to open the ground and notice was served on the owners to do the repair.

At the August licensing sessions of 1901 it was named as one of 12 city pubs from which children under 13 had been seen carrying liquor. In 1909 the city justices referred the Railway Hotel, Botchergate, to the Cumberland Compensation Authority as redundant, but the authority decided privately not to proceed and the licence was renewed.

It was a Maryport Brewery pub by the end, and still the Railway Tavern when the scheme took the lease, and only the lease, in October 1916. It closed in 1917 by Historic England's gazetteer; one record gives 1916, and the directories last list it in 1914. The 1991 column thinks it most likely fell victim to the scheme's rationalisation, and guesses that it was not a very salubrious place. Its site was later the Presto supermarket, which had recently closed in 1991, and by 2018 shops and flats of the late twentieth or early twenty-first century stood there.

Sources 18

Open question

An unsolved mystery

Was the Railway Tavern once the Saddle Inn? The Cumberland News of 13 September 1991 suggests so, from the name of Saddle Lane beside it, and nothing else on record confirms it.

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.

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