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Lost pub · Scotch Street

The Rising Sun

about 1807 to 1907

Opened
about 1807
Gone
Licence expired, February 1907
There now
Demolished, around 1929
Address
7-9 Scotch Street
Where exactly
Placed by house number on the east side of Scotch Street, a few doors north of Ismay's Vaults at 17, from the order in Kelly's directory of 1897. The position is approximate.

At 7 and 9 Scotch Street, on the east side at the Rickergate end, trading roughly from 1807 until its licence expired in February 1907; the building itself was demolished around 1929 to make way for the new labour exchange. A 2011 local-history retrospective traces it back to a member of the Gilkerson family, Scotch Street wine merchants also recorded running other Carlisle pubs of the period, and Parson and White's directory of 1829 has James Gilkerson at the Rising Sun, Scotch Street.

It has often been placed on Rickergate itself, and the records show why. Pigot's directory of 1828-29 lists Gilkerson's house as the 'Sun, Rickergate'; the Cumberland News's 1933 list of the two streets' licensed houses has Mrs Ann Poole keeping the Rising Sun on Rickergate in the 1860s, though the directory of 1858 has her at 4 and 5 Scotch Street; and in September 1886 the licence of the Rising Sun Inn, Rickergate, passed from John Graham to John Nish Thom. The directories from 1858 to 1906 all put it in Scotch Street, at 9 in 1873 and at 7 and 9 from 1884, next door to Amos's spirit stores.

It was a Carlisle Old Brewery pub from 1882. The Cumberland News column of 19 July 1991 says it served customers for over 100 years. It was advertised to let in the Carlisle Journal of 29 January 1858, when it was said to have been well known for more than 60 years, and G. Turnbull signed the innkeepers' memorial of February 1867 for a Rising Sun.

By the turn of the century the authorities were unhappy with the way it, among others in the county, was being run, and it did not even reach the First World War closures. The Carlisle Patriot of 4 January 1907 carried the county licensing committee's second annual report: of 47 licensed premises reported to it by the justices that year, renewal was refused for all but four, and three of those refused were in Carlisle, including the Rising Sun. Compensation for the loss of its licence was fixed at £1,000.

At the county Compensation Authority in July 1906 the house was given as the Rising Sun, Scotch Street, kept by George Ruddick for the Carlisle Old Brewery, and called the most valuable licence the Authority had had to consider. It had been bought in 1882 for £2,700 and valued in 1899 at £5,900, with a brewery amalgamation in view, and it was selling 181 barrels of beer a year; one member remarked that a house doing that trade ought not to have changed hands six times in five years.

That year the city justices also got the Otter Inn in Drovers Lane, the Spirit Stores in Rickergate, the Horse and Farrier beerhouse, also in Rickergate, and premises with a beer-off licence in Devonshire Street closed, which left the city with 123 licensed premises. In November 1852 John Poole advertised that he had moved there from the Light Horseman in Rickergate, promising commercial gentlemen and tourists a 'Traveller's Home' within five minutes' walk of the Citadel station, and selling tiles and drain-bottom slates on the side.

Sources 15

Also lost on Scotch Street

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