CarlislePubs 🛍️ Lost pubs shopShop: T-shirts, hoodies, mugs & a jigsaw

Lost pub · Botchergate

The Midland Railway Tavern

1876 to 1893

Built
In local directories from 1876
Gone
Licence refused, October 1893
There now
Unknown
Address
12 Botchergate
Where exactly
On Botchergate. The exact spot isn't known, so the pin marks the street, not the building.

Not a scheme casualty at all. It appears in Carlisle directories from 1876, at 12 Botchergate, and the magistrates refused its licence in October 1893, more than twenty years before the government arrived. Botchergate was already shedding pubs. It was named for the Midland Railway, whose Settle to Carlisle line had reached the city in 1876, the same year the pub first shows up: on 5 May 1876 the licence of 'a house to be called the Midland Railway Tavern' passed from William Bell to David Ivison, late manager for Mr Carruthers of West Tower Street. It is recorded as standing on the site of the old Waggon and Horses.

It had a nickname. Bulmer's directory of 1884 has no Midland, but at its number lists the 'Elephant Vaults, 12 Botchergate', kept by John Reay of the Rose and Crown, and the reports of its end in 1893 call it the Midland Railway Tavern, 'better known as the Jumbo Bar'. Jumbo, the most famous elephant in the world, had been sold by London Zoo to Barnum's circus in 1882, so the Elephant and the Jumbo are very probably one nickname in two forms.

The County Hotel Company owned it, the Old Brewery Company had leased it since about 1891, and Tom and Henry Skelton, who also kept the Golden Lion (now Gallaghers), sublet it at £120 a year. The Chief Constable described a house ten feet wide throughout, with a 33-foot bar, a back room ten feet square, no sleeping accommodation and a water-closet in a yard that a neighbour had barred.

After a rush of excursionists on 5 August 1893 the Skeltons were fined for permitting drunkenness, and at the September Brewster Sessions the city bench refused to renew, calling it the habitual resort of prostitutes and persons of bad character. An inspector counted 34 licensed houses within a quarter of a mile; the Skeltons' counsel asked whether the neighbourhood would be improved by the 34 being reduced to 33, and called the conviction the house's first offence in 40 or 60 years. He also suggested it might have been licensed as far back as 1811 and asked whether it had once been the Coach and Horses; the Chief Constable said he had never heard so. The County Bench dismissed the appeal with costs, by a large majority, in October 1893.

The Railway Tavern on Botchergate whose tenant, J. F. Wallace, was convicted of allowing gaming in 1891, and which won its licence back on appeal, was a different house: Kelly's directory of 1894 lists the Midland tavern at 12 Botchergate and 'Railway tavern, Jn. F. Wallace, 37A Botchergate' side by side, and that Railway Tavern became the Golden Quoit.

Sources 10

Open question

A date we can't pin down

Was 12 Botchergate licensed before the Midland Railway Tavern? In 1893 the Skeltons' counsel suggested the house might have been licensed as far back as 1811 and asked whether it had once been the Coach and Horses, and in 1873 William Bell had a wine and spirit shop there.

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 Midland Railway Tavern

Also lost on Botchergate

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

Still serving nearby

All the lost pubs