Lost pub · West Walls
The Wheel
- Gone
- Closed for good in 2008
- There now
- West Walls Brewing Co., brewing in the building since 2024
Before any of that it was a school. The building went up in 1814 as the Central School, was taken over by the Fawcett School in 1883, and closed as a school on 31 August 1909. It sat unused as a nightspot for decades until the city's own minutes, 30 March 1972, approved its ground floor for record sales by day and a coffee bar by night; by 9 November 1973, when a kitchen extension went in, it was already trading under a spelling close enough to tell you how everyone actually said it -- the "Twister Wheel".
Wednesdays and Saturdays, and regulars carried a Wheel card. It opened at ten and you were reckoned deeply uncool if you turned up before eleven. Fifty pence shots, pound bottles, snakebite and black, graffiti an inch thick in the toilets, zebra-painted walls, girls crying on the stairs, and a woman called Margaret serving undercooked chips in the back. In 2002 it was gutted and reopened over three floors: XS upstairs in what had been Big Softies, the Lizard Lounge in the middle, a modern basement.
The sticky floors went and so, before long, did the trade. It shut for good in 2008. The XS that opened in that refit is the same Club XS this site listed on West Walls, and it is recorded as closed now too: it went when the building did. It was also known as the Twisted Wheel, and it lost its DJs to TC's before the end.
Know anything about this one?
What's above is everything on file, and it isn't much. If you drank in it, or your family did, or you've a photograph of it, that's more than the records hold.
Sources
- University of Cumbria alumni: where students went out in Carlisle
- Cumbria Crack, September 2022: the West Walls building at auction
- Carlisle Encyclopaedia, "T" page: Central School 1814, Fawcett School 1883-1909, City Minutes 30.03.1972 and 09.11.1973