The Milbourne Arms

History

Opened Built 1852-3, opened 1853

Built

1853, for the mill workers

Owned by

Linton Tweeds, the textile maker

Listed

Grade II

Note

The last pub left in Denton Holme

The only pub on this site owned by a textile firm. Linton Tweeds, the last textile producer left in the area and the Carlisle cloth maker whose fabric has gone to couture houses including Chanel, own the Milbourne, and that makes perfect sense once you know why it exists.

It was built to serve the mills. Denton Holme was a textile district and this was the workers' local, finished in 1853; the listing dates it 1852-3, so the year usually given is the finish rather than the start. That history is still on the walls: hand looms, spinning wheels, bobbins and shuttles from Linton Tweeds, the sort that would have been running in the mills round the corner, along with archive photographs of the trade. A small textile museum you can get a pint in.

It had its moment in the disputed Caldewgate ward election of March 1878. Counsel for the petitioners told the inquiry that the candidates' friends had come into the Milbourne Arms, ordered liquor and made speeches, 'but the eloquence did not flow as fast as the beer'. At a grand meeting on the Thursday the speeches were exceedingly good, 'and, I need not tell you, so was the whiskey', and the landlord came out rubbing his hands: 'Come along, it is all right, sup up, we have got our new candidate here.' The canvassers went all round the town, 'but returning with a touching fidelity to the Milbourne Arms for their cheap drink'.

It is Grade II listed, list entry 1196931: painted stucco over brick on a chamfered plinth, V-jointed quoins, a stone-bracketed metal gutter and a hipped slate roof. It was another Victorian pub the State Management Scheme absorbed rather than built. It came from the New Brewery in August 1916, and that November it was picked as one of the seventeen houses in the city where spirits could still be bought to take away. In 1961 the scheme recommended closing it, which never happened, and it went to Greenall Whitley on 22 May 1973, the same buyer and the same day as the Magpie.

It has come back from a lot. It flooded in January 2005 and reopened that July under landlady Brenda Jardine, one of several Carlisle pubs to come back from the same floods. It closed again in September 2007, the publican blaming the smoking ban, and reopened in June 2008. Linton Tweeds bought it in December 2009, and it was refurbished by owner Keith Walker and reopened in May 2010 with new, shorter opening hours. Davy and Julie had it in 2015. Storm Desmond flooded it that December; it was open again by the spring of 2016, shut once more, and reopened that autumn with Allendale Pennine Pilsner and Deuchars on.

Trevor Wall manages it for Drouth Ltd, who took it on and refurbished it in 2020, and the awards followed. It was the branch's City Pub of the Year in 2023 and 2024, runner-up for the overall title both years, and took Solway CAMRA's Pub of the Year in 2026. The award was presented in February 2026 at the branch's fiftieth birthday, held here because it stands across the road from the site of the Woolpack, where the branch was founded in 1976. Cosy single room round a central bar, weekly quiz, live music, and darts, pool and football teams.

Denton Holme had plenty of pubs once, and the Milbourne is the only one left. One thing on the name: it is Milbourne, after Milbourne Street, not Melbourne. Locals muddle Milbourne Street and Melbourne Street constantly, so you're in good company if you've been saying it wrong.