Wetheral, Carlisle

Crown Hotel

—

State Management pub

Taken over by the Central Control Board in 1916 and denationalised in 1973.

Sold in 1973 to Leonard Wood, of Newcastle for £110,500. Who bought the rest

Country hotel in Wetheral with a bar, restaurant and a spa. A minute from Wetheral station.

Today: See opening hours
Address: Steele's Bank, Wetheral, Carlisle CA4 8ES
Phone: 01228 561888

Directions Ring them

History

Opened An inn from about 1838

Began as: Two farmhouses, around 1800
Became an inn: About 1838, with the railway
Listed: Grade II
State-run: 1916 to 1973

The railway made the Crown. It started as two farmhouses, around 1800, and became an inn about 1838 with the arrival of the Newcastle & Carlisle line and the building of Wetheral station, later growing into a hotel. That gives it something in common with the Caledonian in town, which opened for the Caledonian Railway nine years later: two railway-born houses, one at each end of the line. The Newcastle & Carlisle was among the earliest cross-country railways in England, and it strides over the Eden here on the Wetheral viaduct.

Wetheral was well served then. The Fish Inn started as the Letters before 1813, became the Fish in 1838 and closed around 1902, and an older house at the side of the green traded from 1806 to 1875. The Crown, Grade II listed, was refurbished in 1883.

The Central Control Board took it over from the New Brewery in August 1916 and it was denationalised in 1973, so both Wetheral houses, this and the Wheatsheaf two hundred yards away, were in the scheme for its whole life, while the Queens at Warwick-on-Eden was taken only in 1917. One small corner of the district, and the scheme's patchwork shows up in miniature. In state hands the Crown gained a lounge bar with a modern servery and a new dining room in 1962, and a cocktail bar and central heating in 1966.

Its late state years were not a good advertisement. In January 1968 the scheme's general manager in Carlisle, J N Adams, used the work here to argue for local architects instead of the Home Office team in London: the job had suffered long delays, was poorly planned, and came with trouble over the fittings and unsuitable furniture. By November 1969 he had permission to hire locally for small jobs.

The setting is the same priory country as the Wheatsheaf. A short walk from the hotel crosses the Eden past the abbey ruins and the church, and a riverside trail runs to St Constantine's Cells, the fourteenth-century monastic cliff dwellings. Wetheral Priory's manor passed to the Dean and Chapter of Carlisle, the body that held court in the Wheatsheaf.

It's the grand end of the spectrum now: landscaped gardens over the Eden and the Pennines, a rosette restaurant, a leisure club with a twelve-metre pool. The drinkers' bar has gone by the name of the Anglers; the bar side today, Walton's, is pitched as the hotel's own village pub, doing pub food and real ale seven days a week, which is why it is on this site at all.