The Victoria Inn

Gone

Closed 1 July 2012; the licence was not surrendered until October 2017

There now

Not established

Address

How Mill, Brampton

Where exactly

In How Mill. The exact spot isn't known, so the pin marks the place, not the building. The position is approximate.

The last pub at How Mill. How Mill is the hamlet on the Newcastle and Carlisle line east of Carlisle, where the station opened in 1836 and closed in January 1959: the How on one side of the line almost a mile off, the Mill, a sawmill and the family's house, on the other. The directories carry the Victoria from 1882, but the house is far older: its title deeds go back to 1758, when it was the Ranger, and it was the Victoria Hotel by the 1841 census. The Carlisle Journal's feature on country taverns of 21 July 1961 said it was a public house long before the railway arrived beside it, and that its vellum deeds dated from the 1720s, earlier than 1758.

It does not appear on the scheme's roll of 1920, which lists four other houses at How Mill: a Graham Arms, a Red Lion, a White Lion, and an entry reading simply Hayton Lane End. Of those four, only the Graham Arms and the Lane End can be placed with any confidence today. A hamlet with a station once had five licensed houses around it and now has none.

The 1961 feature gives it a name the directories do not: the Captain's, which it said almost everyone knew it by. The nickname came from Captain C. A. Todd, DSC, an old Merchant Navy man who was proprietor from 1931 until his death in September 1957. He added the nautical bay windows along the front, and the seagoing atmosphere survived inside in a painting of Jupiter, an early steamship on which he had sailed as bosun. In 1961 it was still in the family, run by Desmond John Spencer, who lived there with his wife and three children, and it advertised itself as a free house, telephone Hayton 214.

The licensing register is the main record of its end. The Victoria closed on 1 July 2012, though its paperwork lingered: it held premises licence PL092, converted under grandfather rights when the 2003 Act came in, and not surrendered until 31 October 2017, five years after the last pint.

Still serving, near where it stood

• The Stone Inn

  Hayton
  290 maway

• Lane End Inn

  Hayton
  1.5 kmaway

• String of Horses Inn

  Faugh
  2.5 kmaway

• The Fleece at Ruleholme

  Irthington
  3.0 kmaway