Old Vicarage Brewery

History

A microbrewery, bar and B&B in the old vicarage at Walton, right on the Hadrian's Wall path, so it catches walkers coming off the Wall as well as locals. The building is a Regency vicarage with its original coach house and stable, looking east towards Northumberland and the Pennines.

It exists because Graham and Charlotte Shaw walked the Wall on holiday, staying in places between Carlisle and Newcastle, liked north Cumbria enough to move, and went looking for somewhere to build a life as far from the southern rat race as they could manage. They found the vicarage. The brewery followed: a 300-litre plant, established in 2018, brewing for their own bar rather than for the trade.

It belongs with West Walls in the city and the Carlisle Brewing Company, which started in an outbuilding at the Spinners, in the modern brewing revival. That matters here because the State Management Scheme closed almost every brewery in the district a century ago and then gave up brewing itself. Now beer is brewed again in the city centre, on the Kingstown estate where the Carlisle Brewing Company moved in 2015, and in an old vicarage nine miles out on the Wall.

The bar is seasonal, which is worth knowing before driving out: it runs from spring to early October and shuts for the winter.