The Hole in the Wall

Gone

Closed 15 January 1921

There now

The property was acquired by W. Potter after closure

Address

2 St Alban's Row

Where exactly

Placed from the Ordnance Survey grid reference, NY4008055979, in Historic England's gazetteer of the scheme's premises. The building's use in 2018: commercial.

On St Alban's Row, at number 2 from 1873 and number 8 in 1847, when it was the Letters and the row was numbered from the other end, and number twenty-seven on the scheme's 1920 roll. It began as the Chair, before 1820, and Parson and White's directory of 1829 has Hugh James at the Chair in St Alban's Row. It became the Letters in 1847 and the Hole in the Wall in 1858, and is in the local directories under that name from 1861. The 1861 census gives Joseph Hope, 'inn keeper and tobacconist', 32, as landlord, and M. Robinson signed the innkeepers' memorial of February 1867 for the Hole in the Wall. In September 1890 the licence passed from Isabella Anderson to Nancy Long, who was keeping the Otter in Drover's Lane by 1894.

The Cumberland News of 1 May 1992 tells its later story through William Dodgshon, a not always successful draper, photographer and publican of Victorian Carlisle. His drapery business and house at 66 and 68 Scotch Street, taken over from his father, adjoined the pub and its tobacconist's shop, which ran from Scotch Street into St Alban's Row and were numbered 2 to 4. He went into the pub first as licensee, not owning it for about another four years, and for a time also ran a photography business from premises in Lowther Street.

His business problems were reported in the Carlisle Patriot in 1894, when he had this house; he claimed that he had valued the drapery stock too high when he took it over, and the column thought he had perhaps held the pub for only a year as tenant when that happened.

At a public auction in 1887 he bought the pub for £2,100, against £1,410 at its last sale in 1870, and ten years later, in October 1897, he sold it with the tobacconist's shop for £5,000. The new owners, the wine and spirit merchants T. and J. Minns, sold it again within four months for £6,000 to the brewers Samuel Allsopp and Sons, and the licence passed to James Clarke, a wine and spirit merchant of Rickergate.

So before the state took it, it was a tied house of Samuel Allsopp & Sons of Burton, meaning at least one Carlisle pub was drawing beer brewed two hundred miles away rather than from one of the local breweries the scheme went on to shut. The 1901 census gives Catherine Gregson, 32, Mrs C. Gregson in that year's directory, and Robert Bendle, probably of Hope and Bendle, the wine merchants in the same row, had it from 1906. A Carlisle Patriot sale notice of 25 October 1907 records the property withdrawn from auction at £2,000.

The Cumberland News of 9 September 1916 lists the Hole in the Wall Inn among the houses acquired in the week before, with the St Alban's Spirit Stores in the same row. It was one of the Central Control Board's clear-out closures: shut on 15 January 1921 (City Minutes 1921-22, p157), the property afterwards acquired by W. Potter. One record gives 1924 as its closing year, and the 1992 column believed it ran as a pub until sometime after the First World War. In later years part of the property was Garnett's butcher's shop, with a tobacconist's at the end facing Scotch Street, later replaced by a cosmetics shop when the butcher moved to Dalston.

Also lost on St Alban's Row

• St Alban's Spirit Vaults

77 other lost pubs stood within 250 m of here. See them on the map

Still serving, near where it stood

• The Kings Head

  City Centre
  40 maway

• Crown & Mitre Hotel bar

  City Centre
  70 maway

• Bordo Lounge

  City Centre
  70 maway

• The Old Bank

  City Centre
  90 maway