Coach & Horses

History

Opened 10 August 1929

Opened

10 August 1929

Architect

Harry Redfern

Builder

J & R Bell

Cost

£4,523

Under the white paint on the Coach & Horses is a pattern of mixed-coloured bricks laid in diamonds. Harry Redfern recalled that he had always meant to render it, 'but was asked not to do so as the brickwork was so pretty', and by 1935 the poor bricks and porous stone were letting in the damp. It is render, painted over, now, and the pattern is still under there.

It replaced an older pub of the same name, and for most of its life the old one was a beerhouse. One record gives it a full licence in 1855, but the papers still call it a beerhouse: in June 1856 it was to let as 'a good BEERHOUSE, sign of the Coach and Horses, with Bakehouse and Shop attached, containing 9 Rooms', apply George Graham of Kingstown, and the Cumberland News of 18 October 1991 says it was a basic beerhouse certainly by 1884. It stood opposite what is now the entrance to the Kingstown trading estate, and a 1920s photograph shows its front doors blocked up, as if made from two houses.

It was two doors from the village police station, which did not always help. In July 1863 a carter, George Thomlinson, sent for the Kingstown constable, P.C. Richards, to argue about a fine, then knocked him against a brewery dray at the door; when Mrs Richards brought out the handcuffs he kicked her senseless, and got two months' hard labour. Next April he was called in to find four men from Rockliffe 'all drunk and fighting', and with the landlord got them out on to the road, where they started again. The scheme took the house in October 1916, at first under the Board's Scottish control office, and it came down in 1928 with two adjoining cottages to clear the ground for a bigger one.

The new pub was the middle of three. Redfern and J & R Bell put up the Black Lion at Durdar on 6 May 1929, this on 10 August, and the Horse & Farrier at Raffles on 16 September: three pubs, one architect, one builder, four months, ringing the city north, south and west as the new estates went up, with the Cumberland Inn following in town a year later.

The scheme's annual report to March 1930 has it opening in September 1929, and a Carlisle paper of 8 June 1929 already counted Kingstown among the suburbs 'given a model tavern', so the building may have been finished before its doors opened. It cost £4,523, or just over £4,480 by Historic England's reading of the final invoice.

Redfern's plans are dated 17 May 1928, in a Tudor manner like a small hall with gabled cross wings, a country house style smaller and more restrained than the Black Lion. The public bar at the south end had a big fireplace and a small counter, reached from a front lobby that also held the off-sales. The smoking room in the middle had a large inglenook. The tea room at the north end had its own fire, its own entrance and a little servery for teas, a novel feature by Basil Oliver's account, since it saved carrying teas down from the manager's flat. It doubled as a mixed smoking room, with bell pushes for table service. Woodwork was Californian pine and the floors were lino.

That tea and club room was the scheme's whole argument in a floor plan: somewhere you could take your family, or hold a meeting, without going through the bar. The off-sales was a first too. It was the first of the scheme's new inns to have one at all; the earlier ones went without, probably because the scheme did not want drink carried off and drunk in the street, but out here the nearest off-licence could be a long way off.

The regulars wanted more. In 1934 they petitioned for a bowling green, and Redfern turned them down: the plot was 90 feet square and a green needs 130.

It was sold to John Smith's in May 1973, one of four pubs here bought in that lot, with the Kings Head, the Border Rambler and the Jovial Sailor. The 1972 sale particulars still list two smoking rooms, so the wall between them, inglenook and all, came out after the sale to make today's lounge; a timber beam marks where it stood. The rear extensions date from the 1970s or early 1980s and about 1988, and a photograph of 1974 shows no porch, so its 1929 datestone has been moved or replaced.

More survives than it looks. In 2014 the public bar still had its proportions, its inglenook and its wall benches, reupholstered, and the outside gents was still there, now reached by a covered lobby. The old off-sales lobby could still be made out, a rare survival among the scheme's pubs. The timber signpost out front probably stands where it always did, and the setted forecourt got two trees where the design had four. It was considered for listing in 2015 and turned down because of the alterations.

After a spell as a free house it has been run by Star Pubs, Heineken's leased estate, since June 2025, by the licensing register. Today it has two rooms: a cosy bar hung with football scarves and an L-shaped lounge, often candlelit. Very good value bar meals and a Sunday roast, two changing ales from Theakston and Caledonian when last recorded, and CAMRA rate it a genuine alternative to motorway food if you're passing on the M6.