The Nags Head Hotel

History

Opened Built from a pair of 17th-century houses

Building

Two late 17th-century houses, joined

Made one building

Early 19th century

Note

One of the last few pubs in a town that once had dozens

Brampton used to have 46 pubs. It's down to a handful, and the Nags Head on the Market Place is one of them. The building is older than most of the ones that went: two houses of the late seventeenth century, made into one in the early nineteenth, which is when it took its place on the Market Place. The listing notes it was called the Horse's Head in 1790, and Mike Tuer's records take the inn back before 1781.

How many are left depends on who is counting. One account says the Nags Head is one of only two survivors of the forty-six, and a local historian puts the survivors at seven. This site lists three pubs still trading in the middle of the town, this one, the Howard Arms Hotel and the Shoulder of Mutton, with a Conservative club besides, so two is too few. Either way the shape is the same: a small market town that once had dozens of alehouses, and now doesn't.

That's worth setting against Carlisle. Brampton's pubs went the ordinary way, licence by licence, through decline and the magistrates; the scheme's 1920 roll has no Brampton house at all. Carlisle's were culled deliberately. The State Management Scheme suppressed 53 licences in two years and closed nearly half the city's pubs by design. Two routes to the same thinning out: market forces out here, government in there.

The building is local sandstone, in a hollow formed by glacial action, and has been listed Grade II since 16 January 1984. It is another two-buildings origin, like the Queen Inn and the Roadhouse, but older than either. A nag is a small riding horse, and Nags Head is one of the oldest pub names in England, from the days when every market town needed stabling. It joins the Coach & Horses, the Horse & Farrier and the Near Boot in the horse-and-travel names.

It is a wet-led community local now: bar and lounge with dartboard and pool table, benches out front, a big rear garden with a play area, and two letting rooms. It hosts the Brampton Leek Show, the competitive-leek thread that also runs through the Otter and the Stone Inn. It is a Craft Union house, Stonegate's tenanted arm, and has changed management in recent years. Real ale is on, and the events run to race nights and Open the Box, which is about as community a pub as a chain can produce.