Lost pub · English Street

The Grey Goat Hotel

Gone about 1884

Gone: Gone from the directories after 1884
There now: Not established
Address: 38 English Street
Where exactly: On English Street. The exact spot isn't known, so the pin marks the street, not the building.

Trading before 1776, and sometimes written as the Gray Coat, though every directory from 1828 prints Goat; where the name came from is not recorded. The Cumberland News column of 20 September 1991 spells it the Gray Goat, the Grey Goat in older records, and says it stood on the west side of English Street on the site later occupied by Binns department store, with the entrance to New Bank Lane to its right in its photograph. Bulmer's directory of 1884 gives it as 38 English Street; another record gives 66.

Mrs Robinson had it in 1810, and in 1811 John Lawrence's carrier left it for Kirkoswald. John Walton had it by 1829, though Pigot's directory of 1828-29 names John McCarthy, and John Robinson by 1861. A photograph from the 1870s survives. In January 1882 the Carlisle Licensed Victuallers' Association held its annual dinner at the Grey Goat, with Mr and Mrs Temple as host and hostess, the dining room hung with evergreens, artificial flowers, flags and a coloured portrait of the Queen, and G. M. Murray, solicitor, in the chair. Bulmer's of 1884 lists the Grey Goat Hotel under Joseph Temple.

It is in no directory from 1894; one record carries it on to 1893. The 1991 column calls it one of the older city pubs, certainly around for most of the nineteenth century, but apparently demolished in the 1890s to make way for the new store put up by Robinson Brothers, the forerunners of Binns, which fits. By February 1895, a temperance speaker told a Carlisle meeting, the Grey Goat was a bonnet shop: 'better for the working man to get his wife a new bonnet, than to buy one for the publican's wife'. The same column prints Jim Templeton's appeal for information about a merry group in another picture, and a list of the hotels, inns and taverns of Carlisle in 1829 from Parson and White's directory.

Photograph

Sources 10

cumberlandscarrow.com
CARLISLE_PUBS_Ver_3.xls (Mike Tuer's pub database)
The Cumberland News, 20 September 1991, p. 4: 'Pubs of yesteryear', 'Church wardens checked on pubs', the Gray Goat, English Street (via newspapers.com)
North Cumberland Reformer, 16 February 1895, p. 6: temperance meeting, Carlisle (via British Newspaper Archive)
Carlisle Journal, 27 January 1882, p. 6: Licensed Victuallers' Association annual dinner (via British Newspaper Archive)
Jollie's Cumberland Guide & Directory (Carlisle: F. Jollie & Sons, 1811), p. vii: carriers and the inns they left from (Google Books scan of the Bodleian copy)
Pigot and Co., National Commercial Directory (London, 1828-29), Carlisle: inns, taverns and public houses, and wine and spirit merchants (University of Leicester digital copy)
Post Office Directory of Durham, with the principal towns of Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland (London: Kelly and Co., 1873), Carlisle: street directory and publicans (University of Leicester digital copy)
Bulmer's History, Topography and Directory of East Cumberland (1884), Carlisle: hotels, inns and taverns, beerhouses, and wine and spirit merchants (University of Leicester digital copy)
Kelly's Directory of Cumberland (London: Kelly and Co., 1894), Carlisle: street directory and public houses (University of Leicester digital copy)

Open question

A date we can't pin down

Did the Grey Goat trade on after 1884? It is in Bulmer's directory that year and in none from 1894, while another record carries it on to 1893, when it is said to have come down for Robinson Brothers' new store.

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.

Tell us about The Grey Goat Hotel