Lost pub · West Tower Street
The Tower Tavern
- Gone
- Licence withdrawn, 1918-19
- There now
- Demolished by 1928
- Where exactly
- Placed from the Ordnance Survey grid reference, NY4008256140, in Historic England's gazetteer of the scheme's premises. The building has since been demolished.
Trading from 1834 at 4 West Tower Street, and known as Nanson's Vaults and as the West Tower Street Spirit Vaults, the name under which the directories carry it from 1861 into the 1910s. It was Nanson and Carruthers's wine and spirit business in 1884, and T. G. R. Nanson's in 1897. Thomas George Routledge Nanson, a Rickergate councillor who also owned the Rose and Crown in Lowthian's Lane, died of consumption at his house in Compton Street in January 1897, and that March the licence of the West Tower Street spirit stores passed from him to his manager, John Watson. Mrs M. Nanson had Nanson's Vaults in 1906, and Ridley Forster, who also kept the Cumberland Hotel, in 1914.
It was a Carlisle New Brewery house. The scheme took the lease in September 1916, though the Cumberland News of 21 October 1916 lists Nanson's Vaults, West Tower Street, among the houses taken over that week. The Local Committee of the Control Board decided on 1 November 1916 to rename it the Tower Tavern, as the Cumberland News reported on 4 November. A record that gives Nanson's as the Market Tavern has crossed it with Ismay's Vaults on Scotch Street, which got that name at the same meeting.
The new name did not last. The city's licensing committee recorded the withdrawal of its licence in 1918-19, and on 30 April 1919 the Central Control Board put it up for auction at the Victoria Hotel, through the auctioneer Fred Telford, among fourteen Carlisle properties it no longer needed. The auctioneer still called it by its old name: number 4 West Tower Street, 'formerly Nanson's Vaults', a three-storey building with a wide frontage that 'could be easily converted into a shop or house, or two lock-up shops and a dwelling house'. The building was gone by the Ordnance Survey revision published in 1928.
Sources 12
- Carlisle Encyclopaedia, "W-Z" page
- CARLISLE_PUBS_Ver_3.xls (Mike Tuer's pub database)
- Historic England, Countering the 'deadliest of foes': public houses of the Central Control Board and the State Management Scheme, 1916-73 (Clare Howard, Research Report 89-2018): Appendix C, gazetteer of scheme premises
- The Cumberland News, 21 October 1916, p. 5: 'This week's operations of the Control Board' (via newspapers.com)
- The Cumberland News, 4 November 1916, p. 5: 'The Control Board: progress of the Carlisle scheme' (E. C. Sanders's report of 1 November) (via newspapers.com)
- The Cumberland News, 19 April 1919, p. 10: Fred Telford's advertisement of the Central Control Board's auction of fourteen Carlisle properties, Victoria Hotel, 30 April 1919 (via newspapers.com)
- Bulmer's History, Topography and Directory of East Cumberland (1884), Carlisle: hotels, inns and taverns, beerhouses, and wine and spirit merchants (University of Leicester digital copy)
- Kelly's Directory of Cumberland (London: Kelly and Co., 1897), Carlisle: street directory and public houses (University of Leicester digital copy)
- Kelly's Directory of Cumberland (London: Kelly and Co., 1906), Carlisle: street directory and public houses (University of Leicester digital copy)
- Kelly's Directory of Cumberland and Westmorland (London: Kelly and Co., 1914), Carlisle: street directory and public houses (University of Leicester digital copy)
- Carlisle Patriot, 29 January 1897, p. 5: death of T. G. R. Nanson (via British Newspaper Archive)
- Carlisle Patriot, 5 March 1897, p. 2: transfers of licences (via British Newspaper Archive)
78 other lost pubs stood within 250 m of here. See them on the map
Still serving, near where it stood
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40 maway
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100 maway
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140 maway
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150 maway