Gallaghers

History

Opened Probably three houses of the early 19th century; a pub by the 1855 directory

Built

Mid-19th century

First recorded

1855 directory

Listed

Grade II

Bought by Worthington's

c.1897, for £10,000

Renamed

October 2011

A brewery spent a fortune branding this pub, and the government scrubbed the name off and kept the fittings. Around 1897 the Burton brewers Worthington's bought the Golden Lion and rebuilt its front around their name; in 1916 the State Management Scheme took it over, and since the scheme forbade external advertising, off came the Worthington lettering. Photographs of about 1898 and 1917-18 show it: before, lettering all over the front; after, only a small sign giving the name. It was the Golden Lion for more than 150 years and has been Gallagher's since October 2011. Peter Johnston of the Golden Lion sat on Botchergate's committee of the publicans' subscription for the poor in December 1878.

It was not built as a pub. The listing describes it as probably three houses of the early nineteenth century, later knocked into one, two storeys and four unequal bays with a five-bay return down Princess Street, and it first appears as a pub in the 1855 directory. The Cumbria County Record Office holds the plans for internal alterations approved on 28 February 1879, reference Ca/E4/1070.

The Skeltons, wine and spirit merchants, had it in the 1890s. In 1893 Henry Skelton told an appeal hearing that he had the Golden Lion and other houses to look after besides the Jumbo Bar further up Botchergate, the Midland Railway Tavern, whose licence the city had refused. The justices' counsel argued that was exactly the trouble: too many houses for the Skeltons to watch.

Around 1897 Worthington's bought it from T & H Skelton for £10,000 and gave it the full treatment: canted bay windows, an angled corner entrance, barrel shoots down to the cellar through trap doors in the pavement, and a façade rebuilt around the Worthington name. They also swallowed the house next door: the plans approved in 1897, also in the record office, include the unification of what had been number 1 Princess Street into the building. So a fourth house went into it.

The state took it in September 1916, or August by Historic England's gazetteer, and by November it was one of the seventeen houses in the city still allowed to sell spirits to take away, the Board having limited the off-sale of spirits to those alone. The scheme took the name off but did not undo the building work: the canted bays are still there, and so is the overall signboard with its stucco cornice running round the return on its pilasters, which is in the listing. That is the whole philosophy in miniature.

The takeover was fought. The Board's 1919 memo on compensation still owed records that the Golden Lion's owners went to court for a declaration that they were owed compensation, once the House of Lords had ruled for the Cannon Brewery in a similar case, and served notice for arbitration. They claimed over £20,000. The valuer's best offer had been £10,000, the same sum Worthington's had paid for it in 1897.

It stayed a state pub until 1973. Harry Crellin, the last of the scheme's managers to retire, in 2000, had the Golden Lion among his houses. It was listed Grade II on 22 March 1974, list entry 1291894, under Botchergate, and has since been re-addressed to numbers 2 and 4 St Nicholas Street, which is one reason accounts disagree about where it is: the State Management Story gives 10 St Nicholas Street; the listing says 2 and 4.

The street around it has lost plenty. The former Golden Fleece Inn a little along is now the Carlisle South End Constitutional Club, number 61 at the Woodroufe Terrace junction was the White Ox, and the leper hospital of St Nicholas stood at this end of Botchergate from the twelfth century until the Civil War, which is where the street gets its name. Gallagher's is the only Irish bar in Carlisle, independently run rather than part of any chain.