The Royal Oak

History

Opened A pub since 1742

A pub since

1742

Note

Over 250 years old, mind your head on the doors

Mind your head. The central section of the Royal Oak at Moorhouse dates from 1742, the two wings are later additions, and CAMRA's advice is to be prepared to duck going through some of the doors. That puts it in the same mid-eighteenth-century company as the Sportsman and the Joiners Arms; CAMRA call it over 250 years old.

Moorhouse is a small place on the B5307, three and a half miles west of the city and a mile and a half south of Burgh by Sands, in that civil parish, with a good deal of seventeenth and eighteenth century building in it, including Moorhouse Hall and Hall Farm. Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of 1848 counted 293 inhabitants and noted a meeting house for the Society of Friends, and the early 1870s counted 306. It is not much bigger now. A Quaker meeting house and burial ground from the seventeenth century and a pub from 1742 is a fair pairing for a place of under three hundred people.

The name is the Boscobel oak Charles II hid in after Worcester in 1651, and the state ended up owning a remarkable number of them. The scheme bought this one in February 1918, a year and a half after it began, and its 1920 roll, as the Brewery History Society publishes it, has nine Royal Oaks: this one at number 117, Scotby, Curthwaite, Welton near Wigton, Bridge Street in Carlisle, Gatesgill, Sournook near Dalston, Plumbland, and John Street in Maryport. Two survive as pubs on this site, this and Scotby, on opposite sides of the city and no relation otherwise.

The roll settles which Moorhouse pub was the scheme's: this one. The Museum Inn on Moorhouse Road in Belle Vue is a different pub on the other side of the city, easily confused with it by name alone. The Royal Oak went back into private ownership on 24 May 1973.

It came close to going. A photographer recording the state management pubs in March 2017 found it refurbished inside, with limited opening hours, and thought it was probably up for sale. Nothing came of that as far as anything published shows, and it is family-owned and busy now: small and low-beamed, with log burners, real ale and keg, pool, darts, dominoes and sport on, and three regular beers, usually Cumbrian. The Sunday roast, served noon to four, is the thing people drive out for, and roasts booked out and a darts league is a better position than a good many village pubs in this directory reached.

Oakfest, every June, is what it is known for beyond the village: a beer festival with live music and food from the Stonehouse Smokery, which is in Moorhouse too. A village this size supporting a pub from 1742, a Quaker burial ground from the sixteen hundreds and its own smokery is doing better than most places ten times the size. Regulars note the real ale range has thinned as the pub has aimed more at families, which is a common enough trade-off and worth knowing before you drive out.

One caution if you look it up. At least one listings site describes this pub as a Georgian post inn with eighteen bedrooms and bespoke oak furnishings. That is a different Royal Oak somewhere else, folded into this one by an aggregator. There are a great many Royal Oaks, and this is a small country local with log burners and low doors.