The Rose & Crown

Gone

Closed 1985

There now

Rose Cottage, a house

Address

Kirkbampton

Where exactly

Placed from the Ordnance Survey grid reference, NY3053356487, in Historic England's gazetteer of the scheme's premises. The building's use in 2018: residential.

The village inn of Kirkbampton, on the main street beside the churchyard of St Peter's, and for a century the saleroom for the farms and cottages of the parish. David Miller kept it in December 1827, when an 89-acre estate at Little Bampton was put up for auction 'at the Dwelling-House of Mr. David Miller, the Rose and Crown Inn', and Parson and White's directory of 1829 lists him there as David Millar. Farms and houses at Oughterby, Flatt and Kirkbampton itself went under the hammer in its rooms for the next eighty years, among them a 115-acre estate in September 1897, bought by its own tenant, John Stewart, for £3,800.

Robert Topping had it from at least 1834 to 1848, when his wife Margaret died there aged 46. In 1839 subscriptions were taken at the inn for George Routledge, whose hand had been shattered by a bursting gun at a pigeon-shooting match in the village and had to be taken off. John Robinson followed. The village's annual sports were held at his house in July 1852, with pigeon shooting, quoits, a foot race and wrestling, and the ploughing match of March 1854 ended with 'an excellent repast, prepared by Mrs. Robinson, of the Rose and Crown'. The oak plough given as first prize came from Mr Robinson, plough maker, very probably the innkeeper himself.

In January 1855 a Thurstonfield man was bound over after a row in the inn following a sale: 'I was so drunk, I don't recollect anything about it. What can you say of a public-house row?' The county court report put the Rose and Crown at Thurstonfield, the next village along, but it was this house. George Ward kept it until his death early in 1878, when the licence passed to his widow, Margaret, and in 1887 a Thurstonfield labourer was fined 5s for being found in the house in prohibited hours on a Sunday morning, having 'simply called at the publichouse, the Rose and Crown, on passing through the village'.

Joseph Forster kept it from about 1881. After two convictions for permitting drunkenness in 1893 it was one of two houses on the Cumberland Ward black list in 1894. As it was the only licensed house in the village, the superintendent did not ask the bench to take the licence away, only to stop Forster holding it; Forster, an innkeeper for twenty years and thirteen of them here, kept it, with a warning that he must be careful. Thomas Potts, formerly of Bolton Fell, was keeping it in September 1918, when he took over the licence of the Rising Sun at Cumrew.

It is number 116 on the scheme's 1920 roll, and it lasted far longer than most of the village houses on that roll. It was a Carlisle Old Brewery house when the scheme took it in April 1917 (the Cumberland News of 19 May 1917 lists it among five houses put under direct management in the previous month), though Historic England's gazetteer has the scheme taking only the lease, in August 1916, and converting the house in 1917. One record carries it past 1938, and it was still there when the scheme was wound up: the Rose & Crown at Kirkbampton was sold to Jennings Brothers for £9,000, one of the individual lots rather than part of a group. It closed in 1985 and is now Rose Cottage.

Both it and the Greyhound in neighbouring Thurstonfield were trading in July 1916, on the Cumberland News's list of Ward houses; the Greyhound was taken and refitted in 1917 and closed by 1930. It is a different pub from the Rose & Crown at Low Hesket, also on the roll, and from Redfern's Rose & Crown at Upperby, demolished in 2013.

Sold in 1973 as the Rose and Crown to Jennings Bros for £9,000. Who bought the rest

Photograph

Still serving, near where it stood

• The Royal Oak

  Moorhouse
  2.7 kmaway

• Greyhound Inn

  Burgh by Sands
  3.2 kmaway

• The Wellington Inn

  Great Orton
  3.6 kmaway

• Tam O'Shanter

  Little Bampton
  3.7 kmaway