County Hotel bar

History

Not a pub in the ordinary sense, but the bar of the County Hotel, opposite the railway station and Citadel towers, in a building that has been licensed since the 1890s. Grade II listed, list entry 1208782.

It was built in 1894-96 for Samuel Bousfield by the architect J. Murchie as the Red Lion Hotel, with shops at street level and the hotel above. Under that name it was taken into the State Management Scheme, and when the scheme was wound up it was sold to Whitbread in 1973 alongside the Caledonian next door, £175,100 for the pair. The Boustead family held the licence across three generations, from 1827 to 1914, and the building was extensively remodelled and re-tiled by Doulton in 1896; a large sale of unsold property followed Sam Boustead's death in 1913-14. It was renamed the County Hotel in 1990, went through a 1993 bankruptcy, and was sold to the Cairn Hotel Group in 1999.

Eighty-four rooms as of 2026, a restaurant and the Portland Resident's Bar, recently refurbished, a Green Tourism Silver Award, and some rooms with views of the Citadel. Reviews are mixed on the noise from Botchergate's bars at closing time, and on the hotel bar's own hours, which nobody seems able to predict.

Not to be confused with the separate Carlisle Station Hotel at Court Square, a different building entirely -- an 1852 Anthony Salvin design that has also traded under a "County Hotel" name at various points. Two unrelated Carlisle hotel bars have answered to that name.

A 1801 newspaper advertisement for this pub -- "old accustomed house... without the English Gates," James Henderson tenant, Botchergate having historically lain outside the English Gate -- is also quoted, almost word for word, under a separate "Red Lion Public House" heading in the Carlisle Encyclopaedia. That looks like one 1801 citation split across two headwords for the same building, not a second Red Lion.