Apple Tree

History

Opened 1927 (the present building)

Taken over

July 1916, one of the first four

Rebuilt

1927, to Harry Redfern's design

Listed

Grade II

Renamed

Pippins, mid-1980s to 2013

This is the one to start with. It isn't the oldest pub in Carlisle and it isn't the prettiest, but it may be the most important. It was the first of Harry Redfern's new model inns for the State Management Scheme, the first purpose-built 'improved' pub after the scheme's extension in 1921. Strictly, the rebuilt Globe at Longtown, now the Tavern, got there first, in 1917.

The original Apple Tree was a small Victorian drinking shop with its door round the corner on King's Arms Lane. The Cumberland News of 10 July 1992 says it first appeared in the directories in 1869 at 44 Lowther Street, and by 1897 was at 44 and 46 under T. and J. Minns, having spread into a ladies' outfitter's next door; the Minns ran it until the First World War. It was one of the first four pubs taken over when the scheme began in July 1916, alongside the Bowling Green, the Malt Shovel and the Boardroom.

Then the state knocked it down. Redfern, the scheme's architect, drew up plans for a new kind of house altogether, bigger, lighter and food-serving, designed to make drinking a more civilised business, and the Apple Tree was the first. The council wanted it big, so that nearby pubs could close, and the Board bought the whole block. John Laing and Son built it over the old pub, two shops and three cottages, and Redfern's pub was four times the size of the one it replaced.

Its dates confuse people, but they are three real dates, not an argument: Redfern signed the plans on 29 May 1925, the year the listing gives; the council minutes run through 1926 and 1927; and the pub opened in May 1927. The same confusion attaches to the Horse and Farrier, the Cumberland Inn and the Redfern.

The layout is the thing to understand about this building, and it was uncompromising. Downstairs held three bars, the Second Class Men's, the Second Class Mixed and the Second Class Women's, plus a long Weekend Bar opened only for the extra trade at the end of the week. Upstairs were the First Class Men's and the First Class Mixed, with counter service on the first floor, which was thought experimental, and a large kitchen and wash-up behind for the food that was central to the whole idea. Six bars, sorted by class and by sex, under one roof.

On both floors a central servery opened onto every room, with a lift bringing food down from the kitchen. Each second-class room had its own street door, and a third door led only to the stairs and table service. There was no off-sales. The chairs were mahogany upholstered in Rexine, and the beer engines came from Gaskell and Chambers of Preston.

Its position was deliberate too. Historic England's research points out that standing on a street corner made it easy for the authorities to watch who went in and who came out, with no way through a back door. A five-bay front, terracotta at ground level, red brick above, and a gabled tower at either end: it was built to be looked at, and to be looked out of. The first-floor windows carry an apple tree in their leaded upper lights.

Upstairs got art. Murals by Lena Brown and C.H. Lawrence, The Gardens of the Hesperides and Atalanta's Race, were recorded in 1930, and the Hesperides were still on the walls of the old men's first-class room in 2016, credited by Historic England to Helena W. Brown and C.H. Lawrence, with a frieze by G. Anderson Brown, all of the Carlisle School of Art. Downstairs has been worked over many times, but that floor is largely as Redfern left it, out of use in 2016 but with its panelling, three fireplaces, wood-block floors, servery and food lift intact. The building is Grade II listed.

It is also the best documented pub in the city, because the State Management Story archive holds its paperwork: the 1900 map of the site, the construction plans, an exterior drawing of 1928 and the council minutes of 1926 and 1927, with photographs of the street before the pub was built and the upstairs bar around 1950. Filed alongside are cuttings and memos that read like the minutes of a pub's ordinary life under civil service management: a new manager in 1958, a jukebox in 1960, a piano and a fight in 1962, a beer glass attack reported on 25 February 1963, and in 1970 equal pay, vandalism and missing money. The scans have not been transcribed.

The scheme put it up for sale in 1972, and Greenall Whitley took over in 1973. In the mid-1980s it was rebranded Pippins, and in 1987, under that name, it made the highest profit of Greenall's northern group. The ground floor was opened out in rounds of work in the late 1990s, 2003 and 2012-13, and the Pippins name lasted nearly thirty years.

In 2013 the Apple Tree name went back over the door, and the reopening was done properly: Arthur Armstrong, who had been drinking there for over sixty years, and his wife Kath were brought in to cut the ribbon, arriving in a gold Rolls-Royce. Real ale came back in July 2015, and the pub was refurbished again in 2019.