London Road, Carlisle

St Nicholas Arms

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The scheme didn't take this one over. It built it, in 1921, to draw drinkers away from Botchergate. Nine hundred residents petitioned against it.

Sold to John Smith's as part of Group 3, handed over on 9 May 1973. Who bought the rest

London Road pub, closed since November 2025 and being marketed for a new tenant. It had a good reputation for food, and did takeaways.

Part of Star Pubs (Heineken UK)

This one's shut at the moment.

Closed since 23 November 2025 and being marketed for lease. It has found tenants before. Tell us if it reopens.

Today: See opening hours
Address: 47 London Road, Carlisle CA1 2LE
Phone: 01228 493121

Directions Ring them

History

Opened Opened as a pub in 1921

Building: Early 19th century, originally a house
On the map: Shown on the 1842 Map of Carlisle
Opened as a pub: 1921, by the State Management Scheme
Listed: Grade II

Most of the State Management Scheme's story is about closing pubs. This one it built. The St Nicholas Arms is an early nineteenth-century house, Flemish bond brickwork, sandstone quoins and a green slate roof, Grade II listed and already there on the 1842 map of Carlisle. The name comes from the St Nicholas district at the southern approach, itself named after the medieval St Nicholas Hospital, a leper hospital that stood on this side of the city; probable rather than documented.

The scheme opened it as a pub in 1921 with a specific purpose: to relieve overcrowding in the pubs at the lower end of Botchergate. Rather than shutting a pub, it created one, spreading the drinking away from the worst-pressed corner of the city. The Caledonian, the Border Rambler, the Cumberland and the rest were busy enough that the state built somewhere else for the overflow. In November 1922 the chairman of the Board's Advisory Committee named it as one of only three 'new licensed' houses in Carlisle, premises that had held no licence before the Board arrived, with the Gretna Tavern and the London Tavern.

The neighbours weren't keen. The vicar opposed it, and a petition signed by 900 residents objected to the plans. The Glasgow prohibitionist Peter Chalmers took it up in an attack on the scheme in the winter of 1922-23, calling it a villa turned into a drinking resort where no food was provided. The scheme's answer, in January 1923, came by way of Mr T. Winder of the Trades Council, who sat on the local committee, lived close by and had taken much of the criticism: many of the loudest objectors had 'completely changed their views' once it opened, and now admitted it had been 'a benefit to the locality, and not a detriment'.

Set that beside the Currock, built in 1899 and kept shut until 1903 by temperance opposition, and you have two Carlisle pubs the locals actively fought: one delayed, one pushed through. The St Nicholas has been a pub ever since. The scheme improved it in 1968 and offered it for sale with the rest in 1972.

The licensing register names the owner now: Star Pubs Trading Limited served a gaming machine notice here on 17 June 2025, which puts it on the same estate as the Ship at Thursby, the Reiver, the Royal Scot and the Near Boot. In its last years it was a modernised traditional local, with lagers, craft, ales, ciders, cocktails, pub food, a front terrace, a pool table and two dartboards. It closed around 2018 and reopened in 2019.

It shut again on 23 November 2025, five months after that notice. The people didn't go far. By Solway CAMRA's account its licensees moved across the city to the Rock, which had been closed for refurbishment and is now the Currock Inn, and the licensing register lines up: the Currock's old licence ended two days after this pub closed. One pub's closure was the other's reopening.