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Lost pub · Newtown Road

The Pack Horse Inn

1788 to about 1879

Built
In local directories from before 1788
Gone
Still trading in 1871; gone from the directories by 1879
There now
Not established
Address
3 Colin Street, Newtown Road
Where exactly
The Ordnance Survey of 1865 marks a public house at the west end of Colin Place, on the south side of Newtown Road a little east of the Green Dragon. The pin is placed from that map, so the position is approximate.

On the road west out of the city towards Burgh and the Solway, at Newtown, and trading before 1788. Its address was 3 Colin Street, and the Ordnance Survey of 1865 marks a public house at the west end of the terrace lettered Colin Place, on the south side of the road a little east of the Green Dragon. Colin M'Knight, innkeeper at Newtown, is in Jollie's directory of 1811, and Parson and White's of 1829 names him at the Pack Horse; the terrace was perhaps named after him.

James Weight kept it in the 1840s, innkeeper and gardener. In June 1848 Jane Wight of the Pack Horse, very probably his wife, refused a Caldewgate weaver a quart of ale near midnight on a Sunday; he beat her about the face, told the landlord that he would get 'his allowance' too if he didn't mind his own business, and broke several panes on his way out. The same month Weight stood up in the county court for a Caldewgate grocer whom the Vicar of Thursby had driven over outside the Waggon and Horses at the foot of Caldew Bridge. The man was sober, Weight swore, and could not have got drunk in the half hour since they met 'if he had had a bottle of brandy in his hand'.

'Then he is a pretty good taker,' said the vicar's solicitor. 'Good taker or not, I say he could not have got drunk,' said Weight, and the grocer got his £20. In October 1849 Weight and a partner had a portable thrashing machine 'direct from the Manufacturer at Preston' and offered to thrash for farmers by the day or the stack. He died at the inn in March 1850, aged 68.

By 1853 Benjamin Wood had it, and an auction held there that June shows what was growing up around the old roadside house: new stone-built four-loom weaving shops with dwelling rooms above in Cobden Street, two-loom shops in Bright and Isabella Streets, and tenements in Ann Street, the handloom weavers' Newtown. In June 1858 Thomas Thompson of the Pack Horse, Newtown, was fined 5s for Sunday drinking; a Thomas Thompson was keeping the Pedestrian Arms along the road by 1861, perhaps the same man. In 1859 two men were fined for a 'general mêlée' with two brothers, in the house and outside it, and Matthew Armstrong, born at Holme Low, was innkeeper at the 1861 census, aged 27.

A J. B. King signed the innkeepers' memorial of February 1867 for the Pack Horse, very probably this one, since in May 1868 the licence passed from James King to Miss Jane Little. She had been matron for sixteen years of the Carlisle House of Recovery, the fever hospital at Crozier Lodge on the other side of Newtown Road, and she died at the Pack Horse in December 1870, aged 45. In May 1871 a field at Coalfell Hill, Newtown, belonging to a George MacKnight, perhaps one of Colin's family, was auctioned at the inn, with 'an extensive Bed of valuable CLAY' fit for bricks, or for building.

That is the last sign of it in the papers. It is in the directories until about 1870, the Cumberland News's 1992 'Pubs of yesteryear' column says until 1873, and another record carries it to 1879. That column identifies the building as 131 Newtown Road, a private house in a terrace that may once have been detached, like the Moulders Arms in Currock. The writer did not know why it closed and pointed to the run of closures in the later nineteenth century, with Sunday opening restricted in 1854, 1872 and 1874 and the growing influence of Methodism. Not the Pack Horse Inns on English Street or Water Street.

Photograph

Old Ordnance Survey map of Newtown Road at the western edge of Carlisle, with Green Dragon (P.H.) lettered at the left, a red circle round the end of a terrace marked P.H. under the words Colin Place, a red label reading Pack Horse, and fields and the Cumberland Infirmary grounds to the north
A public house, marked only 'P.H.', at the west end of Colin Place on the Ordnance Survey 25-inch map surveyed in 1865 and published in 1874: very probably the Pack Horse, whose address was Colin Street. The Green Dragon is lettered to the west, and the third P.H., at the corner of Bright Street to the east, was later the North British Railway Inn. The House of Recovery, Crozier Lodge, stood just north of the road, above the top of this view National Library of Scotland, CC BY 4.0

Sources 17

Open question

An unsolved mystery

Was the Pack Horse the house marked at the west end of Colin Place in 1865, the 3 Colin Street of the records, and is that the 131 Newtown Road the Cumberland News named in 1992? And when did it close, between 1871 and 1879?

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 Pack Horse Inn

Also lost on Newtown Road

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

Still serving, near where it stood

All the lost pubs