The Inglewood Forest Inn

Built

Opened October 1953, built by Laing

Gone

Closed 2007; demolition date disputed

There now

Housing

Where exactly

Placed from the Ordnance Survey grid reference, NY4217054537, in Historic England's gazetteer of the scheme's premises. The building has since been demolished.

Named for the old Forest of Inglewood, said to have once run all the way from Carlisle to Penrith. A post-war state inn rather than a Redfern one, and one of the earliest new pubs built anywhere after the war: building licences were still hard to come by, and the scheme had to make a case for it. It opened in October 1953, built by Laing, the same contractor the scheme used for the Royal Scot seven years later. The dates are a mess: Historic England give the opening as 31 October 1953, CAMRA as 21 October, and another record as 9 October.

The plan kept to Redfern's pattern, a public bar, a mixed smoking room, a men's smoking room and an off-sales round a central servery, each with its own door, but added something new to the scheme, a club room for private functions. Historic England's record describes farmhouse brown facing bricks and French windows opening onto a terrace, with a sunken bowling green behind brick retaining walls and flower beds, so the scheme was still laying bowling greens more than twenty years after Redfern set the habit. There is a photograph: Laing photographed their own contracts, and the exterior seen from the south survives in the John Laing Photographic Collection at Historic England.

The scheme sold it to Greenall Whitley on 22 May 1973, or 29 May by one record. It made the news for a knife raid in August 1982, and it changed hands in 1998 as part of a £15 million package of Cumbrian pubs. It shortened its name to the Inglewood before closing in 2007, on 9 November by one record.

Its end is as muddled as its start. Historic England say it was demolished in 2007, CAMRA say 2008, and the State Management archive says 2010. The local paper's own planning coverage sits closer to CAMRA's account: opposition to the pub's closure was still being reported in November 2007, and planning permission for 41 houses on the site wasn't granted until March 2008, which makes an outright 2007 demolition unlikely.

Sold as the Inglewood to Greenall Whitley as part of Group 4, handed over on 22 May 1973. Who bought the rest

Photograph

1 other lost pub stood within 250 m of here. See them on the map

Still serving, near where it stood

• Harraby Catholic Club

  Harraby
  420 maway

• Harraby Pub and Kitchen

  Harraby
  570 maway

• Pinegrove Hotel bar

  Harraby
  610 maway

• The Auctioneer

  Rosehill
  610 maway