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Lost pub · Bridge Street

The Old Anchor Inn

Gone 1901

Gone
Pulled down for the Caldewgate street improvement, by May 1901
There now
The widened road; the building came down in 1901 to make room for it
Address
39 Bridge Street
Where exactly
On the south side of Bridge Street. The street was numbered odd on the south side, from the Waggon and Horses at number 1 by Caldew Bridge, and even on the north, where the Globe was number 6, so number 39 stood on the south side; the Ordnance Survey's 25-inch map surveyed in 1865 marks an 'Inn' there just west of Caldew Terrace, which is the likeliest match. The building has gone, so the position is approximate.

At 39 Bridge Street, on the road from Caldew Bridge into Caldewgate, from before 1820 until 1901, when it was pulled down for the Caldewgate street improvement. It had a large room that working men's societies used, and a long line of landlords, several of whom ended up before the bench.

Mrs Taylor kept it in 1836, when the Journal admired her crop of Italian rye grass on the Willow Holm, nearly thirty inches high and sown after potatoes; cattle, it said, ate it 'with great avidity'. T. Taylor had it by 1856, when about sixty members of the Bread Street Adult School sat down to a Christmas Eve supper there 'of a most substantial character', and in 1858 the Brewery Row Adult School and Reading Room held its social meeting and supper in the large room. It was to let in 1858, 1859 and 1862, with enquiries to Joseph Matthews of the Rickergate weighing machine.

In December 1859 the coroner sat there on James Gilbertson, killed in the Caledonian goods yard. He had jumped on a buffer while the train was moving and fallen, two waggons went over him, and he told the surgeon before he died that no one was to blame but himself. The jury found accidental death and asked the company to fit a handle or step to its waggons.

Arthur McAney had it in the 1860s, when it was a sporting house. He held rabbit coursing there at Easter 1864, and in 1866 Daniel McEwan of Bridge Street offered to match his dog Patboy, twenty-one inches high, against any dog in Cumberland of his height, the best of 21 or 31 live rabbits for £10 or £20 a side on Burgh Marsh: 'a match can be made any night by calling at Mr Arthur McAnney's'. McAney signed the innkeepers' memorial of February 1867.

Thomas McCulley had it by 1878. In March that year, in the disputed Caldewgate ward election, voters were treated in the house and one of the candidate's friends told the company to 'sup off and begin all over again'; the 3s 6d was paid, 'but it would be difficult to prove who paid it'. That winter McCulley sat on the publicans' committee for Caldewgate collecting for the city's poor. His mother Ann died at the inn in 1880, aged 85, and in 1882 the bench let a dancing master, Richard Robinson, move his class there from the Queen's Head, three nights a week from half past seven to ten, once McCulley had laid a new floor.

The Ancient Order of Foresters' Court Star of the West met in the inn's Court-room; in 1885 they gave a purse of gold to their old Chief Ranger, Thomas McKenzie, who was leaving for Australia. McCulley died at the inn on the last day of that year, aged 57, and his widow Sarah took the licence; the Foresters thanked her as hostess at their supper in 1888.

In April 1890 two constables found four drunk men in her bar, a pint in front of each, and a hawker named Watson caught hold of a glass and said 'I will have this any way'. Her daughter told the court it was his father's pint, and Mrs McCulley was fined 21s. In June the Chief Constable hoped the incoming tenant 'would conduct the house better than Mrs McCully, who had recently been convicted, and probably thought it convenient to leave the house'. She died in Milbourne Street in 1897.

The next tenant, John Smith, who worked for a draper in English Street, lasted a year: in May 1891 his furniture and bar requisites, 'including 60 good pints and gills', were sold under legal process at the City Hall. Adam Dinwoodie, late of the Spinners' Arms, followed, and in November 1891 he was fined 20s after a constable found a drunk woman with a glass of beer in the small bar. 'Yes; she is drunk, very,' said Dinwoodie. 'I did not serve her, this little girl did.' The girl was thirteen. His solicitor protested that the police let drunken people into public houses and gave them time to be served before 'making a capture'.

John H. Wilson took the licence in 1894 and was given an extra hour on Jubilee Day in 1897. He was the last landlord. By May 1901 the Old Anchor had been 'demolished by the Caldewgate improvement', and Wilson moved to the Bricklayers Arms on John Street. The Chief Constable's report for the year counted one licence fewer in the city, 'the Old Anchor Inn, Bridge Street, Caldewgate, having been pulled down for street improvement'.

Photograph

Old Ordnance Survey street plan of Bridge Street, Caldewgate, with a red circle around a building on the south side of the street labelled Inn, west of Caldew Terrace, and a red label reading Old Anchor; the Globe Inn and the Old Brewery are named across the street
Probably the Old Anchor: the 'Inn' on the south side of Bridge Street, west of Caldew Terrace, on the Ordnance Survey 25-inch map surveyed in 1865 and published in 1874 National Library of Scotland, CC BY 4.0

Sources 36

Also lost on Bridge Street

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Still serving, near where it stood

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