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Lost pub · Welton

The Royal Oak

Gone
Closing date not recorded
There now
A house
Address
Welton
Where exactly
Placed from the Ordnance Survey grid reference, NY3520944367, in Historic England's gazetteer of the scheme's premises. The 25-inch map of about 1900 letters the Royal Oak Inn beside the buildings here, on the west side of the road north of the green. The building's use in 2018: residential.

The village inn at Welton, in Sebergham parish south of Dalston, and for half a century the home of the Sebergham Agricultural Society. It was there by 1840, when a Chancery sale of a customary estate at Welton was held at the Royal Oak Inn, 'Upper Welton'. The Ordnance Survey's 25-inch map of about 1900 letters the Royal Oak Inn on the west side of the village road, just north of the green.

The society settled its shows there. In August 1848, at John Reed's, it fixed a show of stock and implements on Welton Green, open only to the parish's ratepayers. The dinner was at William Maxwell's in 1853, and at Edward Rayson's from 1856, when the spread was 'of a most substantial character'. The show was held 'in a field adjoining the Royal Oak', with the dinner in a marquee beside the house, and it grew: Castle Sowerby parish was admitted in 1857, and by 1858 the district took in Caldbeck, Dalston and Westward as well.

Members met at the inn to elect committees and the secretary took entries there. In 1858 Rayson was at the Quarter Sessions in a dispute over the parish rate with Jonathan Pugmire, a Welton beerhouse-keeper; the case was thrown out because the churchwardens had not signed the rate.

Henry Bleasdale had the house from 1859 into the late 1860s. He opened his cellar that August with a pigeon shoot for an iron-wheel plough worth £4, a sovereign to wrestle for, five shillings for a foot race, dinner at four, tea at six, supper at eight and a ball in the evening. About sixty sat down to his show dinner in 1861, and in 1866 'a very large number sat down to a somewhat substantial meal'.

By 1870 it was Mr Rigg's, catering for a show that drew on ten miles round Welton, 'which is out of the way'. That year the society lost its founder and president, Mr Heysham of Borrans Hill. In 1877, with its income nearly trebled in ten years, the committee's annual supper was 'admirably served up under the superintendence of Mrs Rigg', with geese given by Mrs Richardson of The Oaks and by E. S. Howard MP.

The Cooks followed, from about 1881; it was the Royal Oak Hotel when Mr Cook laid the show dinner 'in an attractive style' in 1884, and Thomas Cook in 1895 and Charles Cook in 1898 asked the Wigton bench for late hours for the society's supper and the hirings. In August 1893 a haystack worth £14 near the inn caught fire on the evening of a picnic there, and a stranger seen coming from it was taken to the lock-up at Wigton. Mr Cooke's annual pigeon shoot in November 1897 ended with supper by Mrs Cooke and a ball in the committee room, more than forty ladies present and dancing until midnight, J. Hodgson of Ellonby 'fairly bringing down the house with his very comical style of singing several up-to-date songs'.

In 1898 the society, £4 in debt, had resolved to wind itself up and join Dalston's show. It met at the Royal Oak and changed its mind, and Dalston's secretary reported at the Indian King that Sebergham 'would rather die and be buried than amalgamate with the Dalston Society'. Four members gave a pound each to clear the debt, and the meeting voted to hold the show at Welton again.

The scheme took the Royal Oak in 1917, carried out major repairs in 1961-2, had it under a tenancy by 1966, and sold it to Greenall Whitley with Group 4 of the sale on 24 May 1973. It is a house now.

Sold to Greenall Whitley as part of Group 4, handed over on 24 May 1973. Who bought the rest

Photograph

Two huntsmen in red coats and black caps on horseback outside a whitewashed two-storey inn, one drinking from a glass, with a hanging sign reading The Royal Oak, Welton, showing an oak tree; a man in a suit stands to the left, a woman holds a tray beside the horses, and a red sports car is parked behind
A hunt at the door of the Royal Oak, Welton, in the 1960s, going by the cars, with the oak tree on the inn sign Cumbria Image Bank, image ct07292, used with permission
Old Ordnance Survey plan of Welton village, with a red circle round a building on the west side of the road just north of the green, a red label reading Royal Oak Inn, and St James's Church to the south
The Royal Oak Inn at Welton, north of the green, on the Ordnance Survey 25-inch map of about 1900 National Library of Scotland, CC BY 4.0

Sources

Still serving, near where it stood

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