Blacksmiths Arms

History

Opened Early 18th century

Building

Early 18th century, said to have been the village smithy

Run by

The Jackson family since 1997

Tenure

Free house, freehold held by an individual

Rooms

Eight en-suite

Most pubs called the Blacksmiths Arms just carry the trade's emblem. This one, by its own account, was the forge. It is an early eighteenth-century building that served as the village smithy and was extended so refreshments could be served while horses were being shod: drink first, horse second, and eventually the bar outlasted the anvil. The restaurant is still called the Old Forge.

Mike Tuer's records put a name and a date to the story. In the eighteenth century the house was the Three Horseshoes, a smith's sign if ever there was one, and it only became the Blacksmiths in 1868. Nothing yet documents the forge itself, but the old name fits it. That puts it with the Turf (a racecourse grandstand), the Griffin (a bank) and the Sportsman (a friary) among the pubs whose name is what the building used to be.

Talkin itself is older than anything in it. The name is Brittonic, from the Cumbric once spoken here, and the village sits on the edge of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, nine miles east of Carlisle and three from Brampton, with a golf course and the country park at Talkin Tarn within two miles. The village's other old inn, the Hare & Hounds, closed in 2004.

Whether it was a scheme pub is uncertain. Talkin is a township of Hayton parish, and the scheme's roll of 1920 does list Hayton parish houses, placing them at How Mill. But there is no Talkin entry on it, and nothing else connects this pub to the state. It is treated here as outside the scheme, with the caveat that the parish boundary makes that less obvious than it looks.

It was advertising in the Carlisle Journal of 21 July 1961 as the Blacksmiths Arms Hotel, Talkin, fully licensed, with R. and L. H. Atkinson as proprietors, board residence and the telephone number Hallbankgate 252. Most of the other houses in that feature called themselves free houses; this one did not, which settles nothing about the scheme but is worth having on file.

Don and Emma Jackson took it on in 1997 with no experience in the trade at all, which the local press made a point of when they wrote it up. Twenty-odd years later it runs on three generations of the family, between the bar, the kitchen and the log fire, the same kind of continuity as the Tranters at the Stone Inn since 1983. It is a free house with the freehold in private hands, it appears in the Good Pub Guide, it has won CAMRA awards, and it is registered as an Asset of Community Value.

CAMRA are unusually warm about it. Their entry says the owners have made this probably the most popular pub in the vicinity, and lists the formula: three regular real ales and a changing guest, a superbly stocked bar, friendly efficient staff, meticulous attention to detail, and no television. The regulars are Black Sheep Best Bitter with three from Hawkshead.

It is a base as well as a pub, and a favourite stop for Hadrian's Wall walkers: eight en-suite rooms, a garden room that doubles as the function room, a full Cumberland breakfast with local sausages, the Old Forge doing home cooking with local produce, a log fire in the lounge, a beer garden, and Talkin Tarn five minutes down the road.