Lost pub · Drover's Lane
The Otter Inn
- Built
- In local directories from 1870, possibly earlier under an older name
- Gone
- Closed February 1907
- There now
- Not established
- Address
- 11 Drover's Lane
- Where exactly
- On Drover's Lane, which ran from Rickergate to Lowther Street. The exact spot isn't known, so the pin marks the street, not the building.
At 11 Drover's Lane (Kelly's directories of the 1890s give 7), off Rickergate. The Cumberland News of 22 February 1991 calls it one of the more disreputable houses of the Rickergate area, a pub from 1850. It may have begun as a Wrestlers. In August 1864 John Bouch was granted a spirit licence for the Wrestlers Arms Inn, Drovers' Lonning, Rickergate, and he signed the innkeepers' memorial of 1867 for the Wrestlers' Inn; a 'Cumberland Wrestlers, Drovers Lane' is in the Carlisle directory for 1870. By 1873 the Post Office directory has the Otter there, under Mrs Mary Wren at 11 Drovers Lane, beside the Cumberland Wrestlers in Water Street, the forerunner of the Currock Street house, which was a different pub.
Mrs M. Armstrong of the Otter gave 10s to the General Distress Fund in January 1879. Marion Armstrong was on the police black list in September 1880, and is still its keeper in Bulmer's directory of 1884. In January 1894 the licence passed from Mrs Nancy Long to Joseph Asquith.
At the city's annual licensing sessions in September 1895 its licence was withdrawn as no longer necessary, unsuitable as an inn and badly managed. The evidence was that it was a mere drinking shop, a cottage with a smoke room, bar parlour, two bedrooms, a cellar and a kitchen, with no accommodation for travellers or market people; the kitchen window opened into Rayson's Court and could be used to sell drink through, and a ventilator in the cellar was big enough to supply the neighbourhood during prohibited hours. At the appeal in October the Chief Constable, Mr Mackay, said it was not favourably constructed for police supervision and was not needed, with 28 other licensed houses within 200 yards, and that a former licensee had been convicted of selling drink out of hours on a Sunday.
The owner's evidence was that it had belonged to the family of George Rayson of Whitehaven for 50 years, 45 of them as a pub, with seven tenants; he was willing to make alterations, and the rent had been cut to £24 a year. The tenant, John Merrick, said he did a nice trade of about £13 a week, among his customers many country people on their way to and from the auction marts. The justices decided that the appeal against closure be granted, and it survived another twelve years. The column says both this house and the George and Dragon were on a police blacklist for convictions but stayed in business for some years.
John Carrick, born at Cargo, was innkeeper by 1901. In April that year a constable on duty in Drover's Lane heard a woman shouting in the Otter at twenty to twelve at night. With two colleagues he was let in, and in the kitchen they found the landlord 'eating salmon out of a tin with a spoon. He was drunk', and Mrs Farrer of Brunton Place sitting on a barrel. 'You're not going to report this,' said Carrick; 'there's nothing in it; I invited her to supper.' Asked how he knew she was drunk, the constable said her hat was stuck on the side of her head (laughter).
Its case reached the county Compensation Authority in July 1906. The owners by then were Catherine Rayson and John Benn Mossop of Whitehaven, the Maryport Brewery held the lease, and the tenant, Joseph Tiffen, was 'merely a manager'. Its beer sales had swung from 38 barrels one year to 98 the next and 142 the year after. One valuer thought it would let for only about 4s 6d a week without the licence, and another called it 'one of the worst parts in Carlisle residentially'. The Authority offered £500, which was refused, so the case went to the Inland Revenue.
It closed in February 1907. The Cumberland News of 19 July 1991 confirms it among the houses the city justices closed in 1907 along with the Rising Sun, and gives the compensation scheme's result as 123 licensed premises left in the city.
Sources 14
- Carlisle Encyclopaedia, "O" page
- CARLISLE_PUBS_Ver_3.xls (Mike Tuer's pub database)
- The Cumberland News, 19 July 1991, p. 4: 'Pubs of yesteryear', Rising Sun, Rickergate (via newspapers.com)
- The Cumberland News, 22 February 1991, p. 4: 'Lore and More' (Norman Nicholson), 'Unsavoury types at old city pubs' (via newspapers.com)
- Carlisle Journal, 27 July 1906, p. 6: 'Compensation for licences: meeting of the Cumberland Authority' (via British Newspaper Archive)
- Carlisle Express and Examiner, 11 September 1880, p. 8: Brewster Sessions, transfers and the black list (via British Newspaper Archive)
- East Cumberland News, 4 May 1901, p. 5: 'Carlisle Police Court', drunk on licensed premises (via British Newspaper Archive)
- Post Office Directory of Durham, with the principal towns of Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland (London: Kelly and Co., 1873), Carlisle: street directory and publicans (University of Leicester digital copy)
- Bulmer's History, Topography and Directory of East Cumberland (1884), Carlisle: hotels, inns and taverns, beerhouses, and wine and spirit merchants (University of Leicester digital copy)
- Kelly's Directory of Cumberland (London: Kelly and Co., 1894), Carlisle: street directory and public houses (University of Leicester digital copy)
- Bulmer's History, Topography and Directory of Cumberland (1901), Carlisle: trades and alphabetical directory (University of Leicester digital copy)
- North Cumberland Reformer, 13 January 1894, p. 3 (via British Newspaper Archive)
- Carlisle Patriot, 27 August 1864, p. 6: renewal of spirit licences (via British Newspaper Archive)
- Carlisle Express and Examiner, 4 January 1879, p. 4: the innkeepers' subscription list for the General Distress Fund (via British Newspaper Archive)
Open question
An unsolved mystery
Was John Bouch's Wrestlers Arms in Drover's Lane, licensed for spirits in 1864 and listed as the Cumberland Wrestlers in 1870, the house the directories call the Otter from 1873?
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.
71 other lost pubs stood within 250 m of here. See them on the map