Lost pub · Lowther Street
The Shakespeare Tavern
- Gone
- Gone by 1837
- There now
- The former Bowling Green Hotel, now a probation hostel
- Where exactly
- On Lowther Street. The exact spot isn't known, so the pin marks the street, not the building.
The name the Bowling Green Hotel's site carried before it. The house was recorded as Spring Garden House as early as 1713, was the Shakespeare Tavern by 1803, and was trading as the Bowling Green by 1837; it was rebuilt in 1885 and is now a probation hostel. The records place the Shakespeare on Spring Gardens Lane and carry that name to 1834.
In 1811 Jollie's guide walked its readers down 'Spring-Garden-lane, where the bowling-green and tea-gardens attached to the Shakespeare tavern occasionally afford the citizens of Carlisle the opportunities of innocent amusement and gratification'. In 1829 it was 'Shakespear Tavern, (Bowling green)', kept by George Jardin, and 'at the Shakspeare Tavern is a good subscription Bowling Green'. The Cumberland News of 21 February 1992 gives the Spring Gardens Lane house's history in full under the Bowling Green Hotel, including Jollie's description of its tea gardens.
A different Shakespeare traded on St Cuthbert's Lane from 1837 into the twentieth century, one of the names of the Robert Burns Inn, and the scheme's 1920 roll keeps the two apart. The Cumberland News of 15 March 1991 also recalled a Shakespeare Tavern in Spring Gardens Lane, 'and that too has gone', while dating the St Cuthbert's Lane house to the directories of 1844 to 1914.
Sources 7
- Carlisle Encyclopaedia, "S1" page
- D. Perriam, Lowther Street (2022), p8
- CARLISLE_PUBS_Ver_3.xls (Mike Tuer's pub database)
- The Cumberland News, 15 March 1991: 'Pubs of yesteryear' column (via newspapers.com)
- The Cumberland News, 21 February 1992, p. 4: 'Pubs of yesteryear', Bowling Green, Lowther Street (via newspapers.com)
- Jollie's Cumberland Guide & Directory (Carlisle: F. Jollie & Sons, 1811), pp. 82-83: Spring Garden Lane, the bowling green and tea gardens of the Shakespeare tavern (Google Books scan of the Bodleian copy)
- W. Parson and W. White, History, Directory, and Gazetteer of the Counties of Cumberland and Westmorland (Leeds, 1829), pp. 147 and 164: Shakespear Tavern (Bowling green), George Jardin, Spring gardens lane; the subscription bowling green (University of Leicester digital copy)
Also lost on Lowther Street
56 other lost pubs stood within 250 m of here. See them on the map