Sketch and Sip

History

Opened 25 October 2024

Opened

October 2024

Founders

Agata Ostapowicz and Adrianna Gumula

Premises licensed since

2014

An art cafe and bar tucked into Carlyle's Court, off St Mary's Gate: paint-and-drink sessions rather than a pub night, no booking needed, dog friendly, and a wall given over to work by local artists and makers. It is borderline for a site like this, included because it's licensed, though nobody would call it a pub.

Carlyle's Court is newer than it looks, and the ground under it much older. It was built by Laing's Northern Division around 1990, a small shopping centre of about fourteen units laid out for what the developers called high class speciality shopping, photographed for the company's own archive in March 1991. The same firm built the Pirelli factory on Dalston Road, and both sets of pictures sit in the John Laing Photographic Collection. Laing's description says the groundworks for the shopping centre uncovered a Roman road and settlement on the site. That is no surprise this close to the middle of Luguvalium, but the cobbles and the cafe tables sit directly over it.

The licence is older than the business. It was granted on a new application in June 2014, for the Dutch Uncle, a late bar and restaurant that opened at this address on 30 June 2014; before that the premises are recorded under the name Sam Elliot Norman. It was transferred twice, in 2021 and again in September 2024 as Sketch and Sip took over.

Sketch and Sip opened on a Saturday at the end of October 2024, started by Agata Ostapowicz and Adrianna Gumula. Within days the pair were telling the local press it was everything they had wanted: people were messaging them to say it was the safe space the city had been missing, somewhere you could sit and stay without being moved on. They opened Thursday to Tuesday at first and now run all week.

It turns up in the argument about what is happening to Carlisle city centre. When the papers wrote in 2026 about independents filling the units the chains have left, this was one of the examples, described as a place where the regulars become friends rather than customers.

It is open half nine to half five Monday to Thursday and on Sunday, and until ten on Friday and Saturday: a cafe most of the week that turns into a bar for two nights of it. The premises hold a full premises licence, PL511, not a club certificate, so anyone can walk in and be served.