The Wellington Inn

History

Opened Free house since 15 December 2017

In 1965 the Wellington at Great Orton got a car park before it got a ladies' toilet, which says something about priorities. It is a confirmed scheme pub out on the Solway plain, five miles west of the city, more evidence of how far the state's reach went.

It opened in 1823, the second recorded pub in Great Orton after the Ross Arms. The name honours the Duke of Wellington, and it swept across British pub signs in the decades after Waterloo. It joins a run on this site: the Arroyo Arms commemorates a Peninsular War battle honour, the Kings Head was run by a Waterloo veteran, and the Ex was founded by veterans of a later war. Wellington commanded the Peninsular campaign that produced the Arroyo action, so the Iron Duke and that Border Regiment honour belong to the same war.

In 1794 the parish had just one. Hutchinson's History of Cumberland records 'only one public-house in this parish, at Woodhouses, half way between Carlisle and Wigton', and put the parishioners' good health down to 'temperance and moderate exercise'.

The name has cropped up more than once locally: the Wellington on English Street went into the Citadel Tavern. This is the survivor.

The Cumberland News of 19 May 1917 lists it among five houses put under the Board's direct management in the previous month; other records say 1918. The scheme's 1920 roll has the Wellington, Great Orton, at number 133. Kirkbampton, the next village, had a scheme pub of its own on the same roll, a Rose & Crown at number 116, of which nothing else is recorded. The pub itself is at Great Orton, not Kirkbampton, which is worth knowing if you go looking for the two of them separately.

It has been free of the tie since December 2017. Very traditional inside: a locals' bar, a dining area and a separate games room. All home-cooked, meat from the village butcher, three handpumps mostly from Great Corby and Keswick, and open mic on the last Friday of the month. There's a ten-pitch touring caravan park in the grounds, so you can eat, drink and stay.