The Stag Inn

History

Opened Late 17th century

Built

Late 17th century; extended about 1980

Listed

Grade II, 19 June 1973

Taken over

April 1917, an early village acquisition

Returned to private hands

Around 1973

Closed by floods

Dec 2015 to 8 June 2017, then 2 Jan 2020 to 11 June 2022

The Stag at Low Crosby has been here since the late seventeenth century, by Historic England's listing, and it seems always to have been the Stag, which is rarer than it sounds for a pub that old. It has survived the police, the state and the river, which has shut it three times.

It is built of mixed sandstone rubble, river cobbles and some brick, under a slate roof with nineteenth-century brick stacks: two storeys, two bays, a quoined doorway, and windows on the right that were probably mullioned once. Many of the oak beams inside are original. The two-storey bay on the end is a matching extension of about 1980, built in the same materials and listed with the rest; the listing dates from 19 June 1973. It is in the directories from before 1829.

The police tried to close it in 1892. At the Cumberland Ward licensing sessions that September they objected to renewing the licence of the Stag Inn, Crosby-on-Eden, then occupied by Thomas Armstrong and owned by a Mrs Jackson of Stanwix, on the grounds that it was not needed, that the premises were unsuitable, and that the tenant had been convicted of gaming. It plainly survived.

The state came early for a village pub. Historic England's gazetteer has the lease taken in August 1916 and the pub converted in 1917, and other records give April 1917; the Cumberland News of 19 May 1917 lists the Stag among five houses put under the Board's direct management in the previous month. The same paper listed the village's Crown & Mitre, just along the road, among the houses the Board closed that month. Crosby-on-Eden once had four pubs; the Laughing Stock was named after a racehorse.

The Stag was let to a tenant in the late 1960s and wasn't back in private hands until around 1973. It joins the Wheatsheaf, the Crown, the Royal Oak and the Lowther Arms in showing how far out into the Eden valley the scheme reached.

Then the river. The January 2005 flood shut it until 2006. Storm Desmond flooded it again in December 2015, along with the village school and houses in Crosby-on-Eden, and regulars set up a community group to stop it closing for good. By the autumn of 2016 the group had raised enough to buy it and the brewery had accepted its offer. It reopened on 8 June 2017, and shut again after New Year's Eve 2019, when its owners, Margaret Graham and Ron Brand, put it up for sale at £260,000.

That Desmond flood is the one that put the Turf out for four months; with Carlisle RFC in 2005, Edenside and Stony Holme, the Eden has shut a good part of the low ground on this site more than once.

It reopened on 11 June 2022, closed again in 2024, and reopened under new owners around the turn of 2025 after a refurbishment. It is now run by Sarah and Dan, who came from a pub of their own at Newmarket; Dan has been head chef at the Samling, Gilpin and Langley Castle. The day runs on a Hearth menu until mid-afternoon and an Ember menu in the evening, and the Sunday roasts get the reviews. Inside it is four small rooms off a central bar, low beams, stone-flagged floors and wood burners. It's close to the Hadrian's Wall Path, which brings walkers. Shut Monday and Tuesday, so check before you drive out.