The Queen Inn

History

Opened Possibly late 19th century

Building

Possibly late 19th century, two adjoining buildings joined

State-run

October 1916 to 1973

Reopened

10 September 2026

You can reach the Queen by train. Get off at Wetheral, walk out across Corby Bridge, the viaduct people call the Wetheral Viaduct, on the pedestrian walkway bolted to its side high above the Eden, and you come up into Great Corby on the far bank. It is one of the better approaches to any pub in the district, and at the end of it is a handsome old inn on the upper green.

The inn is older than its building. Its records go back before 1776, when it was the Ranger; it became the Queen Victoria soon after she came to the throne, and had shortened to the Queen Inn by 1890. The building itself is probably late nineteenth century, formed from two adjoining buildings knocked together.

The village is worth the trip on its own. Great Corby sits above the eastern bank of the wooded Eden gorge, directly opposite Wetheral. The name means Corc's farm, from an Irish personal name, and the village was made a conservation area in December 1977. One statistic has followed it around since 2016: women in the Great Corby and Geltsdale ward had the highest life expectancy at birth of any ward in England and Wales, 97.2 years.

The village had a railway pub too. The Corby Bridge Inn, by the level crossing at the northern end, was built in the 1830s for travellers on the new railway, is Grade II listed, and has a fair claim to being the oldest railway pub in the world. It was sold to a property developer and closed early in 2015, which left the Queen as the village's only pub.

The Queen was taken into the State Management Scheme in 1916, in October by one record and in August, from the Old Brewery's estate, by Historic England's gazetteer, and held until 1973, run as a tenancy from the late 1960s. The Otter at Little Corby, a mile up the road, was the one pub in the area kept out of it entirely: the rule and its most famous exception, a mile apart.

Look across the green and you will see a grand stone building that is not a house. That is the old forge, built in 1833 for the Howards of Corby Castle in imitation of Vulcan's forge, Grade II listed, and it has served in its time as the pub's beer cellar. It is also where Great Corby Brewhouse started, brewing its first beer there in January 2009 before outgrowing the building and moving elsewhere in the village. Corby ale is poured at the Wheatsheaf and the Wellington too.

The pub belongs to the Corby Castle Estate, and that is the thing to understand about its recent history: it is leased, and its runs of closure are gaps between tenants rather than a building falling down. Solway CAMRA's magazine in 2016 described it instead as owned by Cumberland Breweries, the Great Corby brewery. The castle itself is Grade I listed, built round a thirteenth-century tower house and held by the Howards from 1611 until 1994.

It is a serial closer. It shut from August 2016 to November 2017, and again from July to December 2019. The 2019 reopening was taken on by Robert and Sylvia Cowan with David and Roweena Corkill, the same partnership then demolishing and rebuilding the Golden Fleece at Ruleholme. Robert Cowan told the paper the place was crying out for someone to give it some attention, and they planned a fifty-cover dining room upstairs with informal eating below. They ran it about five years, gave up the lease on 30 June 2024 citing personal reasons and the trading climate, and the estate went to Savills for new tenants.

It reopened on 10 September 2026 after a complete refurbishment, open seven days a week with food from noon: four real fires, an elevated dining area at the back and a restaurant upstairs, tables out onto the green itself, and dogs welcome inside and out.