Lost pub · Beaumont
The Lowther Arms
- Gone
- Closed 1917
- There now
- A house, Lowther House
- Address
- Beaumont
- Where exactly
- Placed from the Ordnance Survey grid reference, NY3483059381, in Historic England's gazetteer of the scheme's premises. The building's use in 2018: residential (Lowther House).
The Beaumont pub, number 99 on the scheme's 1920 roll. Beaumont sits on Hadrian's Wall above the Solway plain. Its earlier name is the good detail, and it points straight at the landowner. It was the Lowther Castle Arms before it shortened itself, the Lowthers being the Lonsdale family whose name is on half of Cumberland, including the street in Carlisle where the state opened its first pub in 1916. Parson and White's directory of 1829 has Nancy Barnes at the Lowther's Arms.
In February 1887 the licence passed from William Harrison to John Armstrong, and in February 1893 from the late John Armstrong to his widow, Jane. It was still trading in July 1916, first on the Cumberland News's list of the Ward houses the Board meant to buy.
It is counted among the Board's early closures: the directories run to 1917, the year the scheme took it. One record queries whether it traded on as late as 1957, and Mike Tuer's records say it did, closing in May 1957 and always under the one name. The Cumberland News of 26 June 1992 printed a plea from a reader, Willie McCormick of Apple Garth, Cargo, for any photograph of the old pub at Beaumont, which he said was owned by his mother's parents. There was by then no pub at Beaumont. The building is a house now, Lowther House.
Sources 10
- Brewery History Society: the 1920 roll of Carlisle & District State Management Scheme pubs
- Mike Tuer's Cumberland pubs database (Solway CAMRA): directory first and last appearances
- CUMBERLAND_PUBS_4.xls (Cumberland pubs database)
- Mike Tuer, "Pubs of Carlisle" Day 219, Old Photos of Carlisle and Surrounding Area (Facebook)
- Historic England, Countering the 'deadliest of foes': public houses of the Central Control Board and the State Management Scheme, 1916-73 (Clare Howard, Research Report 89-2018): Appendix C, gazetteer of scheme premises
- The Cumberland News, 8 July 1916: 'First State tavern: to be opened by Lord Lonsdale', with the list of licensed houses in the Cumberland Ward and Longtown divisions (via newspapers.com)
- The Cumberland News, 26 June 1992, p. 4: 'Pubs of yesteryear', Lion and Lamb, Scotch Street (with a plea for a Beaumont pub photograph) (via newspapers.com)
- W. Parson and W. White, History, Directory, and Gazetteer of the Counties of Cumberland and Westmorland (Leeds, 1829), p. 361: Beaumont: Barnes Nancy, vict. Lowther's Arms (University of Leicester digital copy)
- North Cumberland Reformer, 2 February 1893, p. 3: licence transfers (via British Newspaper Archive)
- Carlisle Patriot, 11 February 1887, p. 3: transfers of licences (via British Newspaper Archive)
Open question
What we don't know yet
Does anyone have a photograph of the Lowther Arms at Beaumont while it was trading? Willie McCormick of Cargo, whose mother's parents owned it, asked the Cumberland News for one on 26 June 1992.
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.
Still serving, near where it stood
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830 maway
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2.4 kmaway
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2.5 kmaway
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3.0 kmaway