Lowther Arms Inn

History

Note

The last of three pubs the village once had

Extended

1997-99; B&B added 2009

Scheme

A district pub, detail undocumented

Over the years the front door of the Lowther Arms has been in all but one of the building's outside walls: a pub whose entrance has wandered nearly the whole way round. It is a free house, family-run since 1995, and the only survivor of the pubs Cumwhinton once had, the village version of the Milbourne being the last one left in Denton Holme.

The name comes from the Lowthers, Earls of Lonsdale, seated at Lowther Castle near Penrith, the dynasty that dominated Cumberland landowning and politics for centuries. The name is all over this site: this pub, two lost Lowther Arms in the archive at St Cuthbert's Lane and at Beaumont, the Lowther Arms as one of the Sportsman's five former names, and Lowther Street where the Apple Tree stands. No build date is recorded for this one.

The Cumberland News of 8 July 1916 printed all 68 licensed houses in the Cumberland Ward division, which the Board was taking over, and it names two at Cumwhinton: the Lowther Arms and the Horse and Jockey. Historic England's gazetteer adds the outline: the Board took the Lowther Arms over from Iredale's Brewery in August 1916, and the scheme sold it in 1972-3. The State Management Story lists it, and the scheme's roll of 1920 puts it at number 100.

The Horse and Jockey, at the road junction in the village by Mike Tuer's records, the Board closed in December 1916, and it has an archive entry of its own. The Black Cow at Hornsby Gate, number 70, belongs to the country out near Cumwhitton rather than to this village, and has an archive entry too.

The roll's Red Lion at Cumwhinton, number 111, looks like a slip. Historic England's gazetteer has no Red Lion at Cumwhinton at all, and the 1916 list names none. It does have a Red Lion Hotel at Cumwhitton, a few miles east, now the Pheasant, whose lease the Board took in August 1916, and the 1920 roll has no Cumwhitton entry. The two village names are a letter apart. The Cumberland News of 7 June 1919 advertised an auction in "the Red Lion Inn, Cumwhitton", so that house was open the year before the roll, and the 1916 list has no Cumwhitton house at all, which suggests Cumwhitton lay outside that division. Number 111 is very probably the Cumwhitton house filed under the wrong village.

The family extended and refurbished the pub between 1997 and 1999, using local stone inside to blend the old part with the new, and added en-suite rooms in 2009. Bare sandstone walls, old pictures and ornaments, dark wood and soft lighting, split into a quieter dining side and a more social lounge side. And don't try to take a book off the shelves either side of the big Jennings mirror. They're painted on.