Joiners Arms

History

Opened First recorded 20 September 1785

First recorded

20 September 1785

Possibly trading from

Around 1745

State-run

August 1916 to 1973

Status

Closed and for sale

On the corner of Church Street and Byron Street in Caldewgate stands one of the three oldest pubs in Carlisle, and at the moment it is empty. The Joiners Arms was first recorded on 20 September 1785 and may have been trading for some forty years before that, which would take it back towards 1745 and make it a genuine rival to the Sportsman for the oldest of the lot. Add the Kings Head, which has the older site, and you have all three contenders. This is the one that's shut.

The name is a trade sign. A joiner is a skilled woodworker, and a Joiners Arms carried the guild's arms over the door, which suited Caldewgate, all workshops and breweries. Locals have another name for it. CAMRA list it not as the Joiners Arms but as the Joiners Arms (Blue Lugs), which makes the nickname closer to a second name.

Where Blue Lugs came from is still argued over. The Cumberland News of 15 March 1991 gave the popular version: that Blue Lugs was a manager of the 1930s with a purple complexion, and on 29 March a nephew of that manager assured the column that the man really did have blue-veined ears. A reader offered another, which the column thought could well be the right one: that the name belonged to the customers, not the landlord. A signboard in the photograph pointed to Creighton's timber yard nearby, whose sawyers marked timber with indelible pencils, kept them behind their ears and stained their ears blue. The pub's own version has a joiners' workshop behind it whose men carried marking pencils until their ears went blue.

The building owes its present shape to the State Management Scheme. According to Historic England's gazetteer, Iredale's Brewery had the pub when the Board took it over in August 1916, and the Cumberland News of 23 March 1918 records the decision to alter it so that it could take the place of the adjoining Queens Head. A 1919 account of the scheme adds that the rebuilt Joiners Arms replaced two ramshackle public houses standing side by side, so this pub is a closure as well as a survivor, the same trick the scheme pulled at the Irish Gate and the Citadel.

It was reconstructed in the autumn of 1918 and, by the gazetteer, reopened that October. The Board's report for 1918 explains why it did not come back as a food tavern: the Pheasant opposite already was one. Instead the plan made room for a public bar, a separate smoking room and a smaller women's room with its own fireplace and its own counter to the bar, largely for the women working at the biscuit factory nearby. The gazetteer records further improvements approved in 1967, and the pub returned to private ownership in 1973. Two plaques from the scheme years survive to the right of the main entrance, and much of the original brickwork is still there under the modern render.

Like most old pubs it picked up a ghost story, reported in the Cumberland News on 17 June 1977. A photo caption of 1 March 1991, under a view of the pub from about the turn of the century, says staff had seen a Highlander and a Cavalier at different times in recent years.

Its neighbours were less lucky. Eighteen pubs are recorded as trading in Caldewgate between 1894 and the start of the scheme in 1916. By 2016 three were left: the Joiners Arms, the Jovial Sailor and the Milbourne Arms. With this one shut, it is two.

The river has tested it too. Caldewgate is low-lying and hard by the Caldew, and the pub was badly hit in the 2005 flood, the same event that put six feet of water through Carlisle RFC. A photograph from 6 December 2015 shows it standing white against the water again in Storm Desmond, with the McVitie's factory, successor to those biscuit-factory women, directly behind it. It was open again by spring 2016.

In its last years as a pub it was an old-fashioned boozer: a compact L-shaped room with a fireplace and dartboard at one end and a pool table at the other, three handpumps, football and darts teams and live bands. Good ale, good food and good craic, as it billed itself.

It shut once from August 2022 to March 2023, then closed again in December 2024 and was put up for sale. The agent's particulars were later reduced to offers around £275,000, and by September 2026 the listing showed it under offer. Who owns it is not straightforward: CAMRA record Punch Pubs as freeholder, one directory gives Star Pubs, and the gaming register carries a Star Pubs Trading notice dated 17 June 2025, the same day the company re-notified across its Carlisle houses. Ownership is the least settled thing on record about it.

Its future may not be as a pub. In March 2026 Maggie Lo Catering Supplies, a Birmingham company, applied to Cumberland Council to fit a new ventilation system, and the News & Star reported that the historic pub could become a Chinese noodle restaurant. The council refused the application because the drawings contained errors and were unclear, and said its requests to the agent for clarification went unanswered. The applicant appealed to the Secretary of State in June 2026.