Bridge End Inn

History

Opened Late 18th century

Building

Late 18th century, Grade II listed 1984

State-run

March 1918 to 1973

Sold

To Greenall Whitley, 4 April 1973

In the three years to September 1915 the Bridge End Inn averaged takings of £654 a year, selling 74 barrels of beer, 304 dozen bottled beers and 225 gallons of spirits a year. Nowhere else on this site can you see what a pub near Carlisle actually sold before the state arrived, and it is the richest paper trail of any of them, written down at the moment of nationalisation.

The inn is far older than the paperwork. It opened in the eighteenth century as the Waggon and Horses and became the Bridge Inn in 1834, by Mike Tuer's records; a Joiners Arms stood on the road to the bridge as well. The listing dates the building to the late eighteenth century and Historic England's gazetteer to the late nineteenth, with twentieth-century additions, and it has been Grade II listed since 1984.

The pre-scheme owner was W.T. Trimble, a director of the Maryport Brewery, who in 1893 leased it to the brewery for thirty years at £34 a year, with an option to buy at £897 12s. The description of the place survives: fully licensed, with a smoke room, bar, parlour, dining room, kitchen, scullery, beer cellar, four bedrooms and two attics, plus a four-stall stable, a combined washhouse and coach house, a store room, yard and garden. The stable and coach house make it a former coaching stop, like the Near Boot and the Graham Arms.

At the takeover the tied tenant, Andrew Little, paid £30 a year to the Maryport Brewery. The Cumberland News of 23 March 1918 lists the Bridge End Inn, Hawksdale, among four houses placed under the Board's direct management since the Carlisle committee's last meeting, and the Board eventually bought the freehold of the whole block for £950.

The scheme altered it in 1928-9, and its annual report for that year counts the Bridge End among the houses where 'improvements have also been effected in the accommodation'. Its sign needed no imagination, the scheme's jubilee supplement said in 1966: the board showed the inn itself, beside the end of the bridge over the river. It stayed state-owned until 4 April 1973, when it went to Greenall Whitley with the Arroyo, the Currock, the Crown & Thistle, the Cumberland and the Magpie.

It has been round the houses on food since: CAMRA record a former name of Royal Thai Restaurant & Pub, and it now does home-made traditional dishes with an Italian twist and takeaway pizzas, Thai to Italian in one building. Cosy bar, lounge and conservatory dining, beer garden and play area, and camping in the garden by arrangement.