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Lost pub · Victoria Viaduct

The Viaduct Hotel

Gone 1969

Built
Built 1887 as a temperance hotel
Gone
Closed 1969
There now
A Tesco's store, built after demolition in 1970
Where exactly
On Victoria Viaduct. The exact spot isn't known, so the pin marks the street, not the building.

The Victoria Viaduct's other lost hotel, alongside the Central Hotel, and never a drinking house. The viaduct itself was built in 1877 to carry English Street over the railway, replacing the old Borough Street route; the Central Hotel followed it in 1880 and this one in 1887, built specifically as a temperance hotel. It stayed alcohol-free throughout its recorded life. Ann Ion was manageress in the 1891 census, 27 and born in Cumwhitton, and by 1901 it's given in full as the Viaduct Temperance Hotel, run by Mary Smith, 38, born in Carlisle. In September 1897 a Mr Chisam was granted a licence for billiard playing there.

It was used for business meetings. In July 1916 the master thrashers of the district called a meeting 'in the Viaduct Temperance Hotel' to consider 'fixing prices', and that month Mr and Mrs A. C. Astor of the Viaduct Hotel gave a guinea to the Mayoress's war memorial fund. In 1916 it was one of four Carlisle hotels the Board left alone, with the Crown and Mitre, the County and the Station; the others were spared for having no public bar, this one for being a temperance house. The scheme still tried to buy it in 1952.

Its lecture room was still a regular auction room in the 1950s: on one page of the Cumberland News in September 1957, two auctioneers advertised property sales to be held there, one in the 'Viaduct Hotel Lecture Room' and one in the 'Viaduct Hotel Lecture Hall'. It closed in 1969 and was demolished the following year to make way for a Tesco's store.

Photograph

Black and white photograph of a busy cobbled street curving onto a viaduct, with a round castellated building on the left, a cyclist and an open car in the road, and on the right a tall stone building lettered Temperance and Commercial, Viaduct Hotel, Cafe and Dining Rooms, with a Central Hotel sign on the building beyond
The Viaduct Temperance and Commercial Hotel on Victoria Viaduct in the 1920s, with the Central Hotel's sign further along Sankey Family Photograph Collection, Cumbria Archives: Viaduct and Viaduct Hotel, Sankey 6558, BDB 86/1/1958 (border trimmed), CC BY-NC 4.0
Old photograph of a tall stone building lettered Temperance and Commercial, Viaduct Hotel, Cafe, Dining Room and Tea Rooms, with arched doorways, lamps and boards on the pavement reading Viaduct Dining and Tea Rooms
The Viaduct Hotel, Victoria Viaduct, around 1905 Cumbria Image Bank, image ct20942, used with permission

Sources 5

Also lost on Victoria Viaduct

36 other lost pubs stood within 250 m of here. See them on the map

Still serving nearby

All the lost pubs