The Maister Drunk, the Horse Committed.
- Stewart
- 10 minutes ago
- 5 min read
The years just seem to fly by these days. Once again it's 25th January and once again, in celebration of my Ayrshire roots, it's time to celebrate the birthday of the Scottish bard, Robert Burns.
On this day in previous years we have met the Cross Keys in New Cumnock, John Richard's Alehouse in Tarbolton and yet another Cross Keys, this time the one that used to be in Falkirk. All of which have a connection with Rabbie Burns. We also met a number of others in this ride around Dumfriesshire and Ayrshire. In fact we've met so many places with a Burns connection that for this year I'm having to head south, across the border, into England. Into Carlisle to be more precise.
On 31st May 1787, Robert Burns spent the night in the Malt Shovel on Rickergate.
Whilst in town, he allowed his horse, Jenny Geddes, to graze somewhere that she shouldn't have and the mare was impounded. The landlord of the day, one Peter Reid, informed him that he would have to pay a fine to the mayor and when Burns went to the town hall to make payment he offered up this verse alongside his dues:
Was e’er puir poet sae befitted,
The maister drunk – the horse commited?
Puir harmless beast! tak thee nae care,
Thou’lt be a horse when he’s nae mair.
Legend has it that the mayor was sufficiently amused that he let Burns off without paying.
I can't vouch for any of the above for the earliest that I've been able to go back is to 19th July 1817, thirty years after Jenny Geddes was enjoying her illicit grass, when the pub, and its landlady Mrs Bushby, got a mention in the Carlisle Patriot.
By the time that the representatives of Pigot's directory had arrived in town in 1828, the place was being run by Alexander Ritchie...
...and his wife, Isabella, continued there after his death.
The pub isn't named in the 1841 census, but Isabella is recorded as living on Rickergate and so is James Gilbertson who seems to be running the place three years later, if the Carlisle Patriot of 12th July 1844 is to be believed.
Running pubs must've been a hazardous occupation for blokes back then, for it seems to be a common theme in my recent posts that so many of them die before their wives. James was no exception. After he was taken to the great tap room in the sky, his widow Letitia took over pouring the pints.
Letitia, herself, died in 1874 by which time the Malt Shovel was being run by one Andrew Millican. He'd been there in 1871...
...and was still there a decade later...
...but had been replaced by Jane Little by the time that the enumerator came a-calling once more.
Back in 1881 Jane, along with her husband James, had been running a beerhouse a little further along Rickergate, but James had since died – see, a common theme – and Jane had moved into the Malt Shovel, together with her married daughter, Mary Matthews and her younger offspring.
In 1894, Carlisle City Council decided to sell the Malt Shovel to Workington Brewery for the sum of £2,000, but this didn't affect Jane's tenancy as she was still there a decade later...
...and it looks as if the place remains in the family's hands, for in the 1921 edition Kelly's listed Mary Matthews as being at the Malt Shovel.
But, and it's quite a big but, both the 1911 and 1921 censuses show her as being elsewhere and the Malt Shovel being occupied by a different Mary Matthews and her husband Robert, who gets a mention in Kelly's 1929 offering, even if they do manage to miss the letter s off his surname.
Between the time that the Matthews family moved in and Robert getting a mention in Kelly's directory a few things had been going on in the world. The principal one was the matter of a slight skirmish breaking out on mainland Europe in 1914, resulting in the nation's need for armaments. A large munitions works was constructed near Gretna and in order to curb the amount of drinking by the workers, the pubs and breweries of the area were essentially nationalised.
We've met the State Management Scheme before in this post about the Swan and Pike in Enfield, and if want to find out a bit more about its operation in the Carlisle region, here is a link to The State Management Story website.
Along with controlling what you could drink, when you could drink and who could buy you a drink, the scheme aimed to improve the nature of public houses. As a result, the original Malt Shovel was demolished in 1927 and replaced with a new namesake, designed by Harry Redfern, which opened in August the following year.
Here's a pic of the original Malt Shovel, towards the end of its days, with me on my bike waiting for opening time.
1927? That sounds a bit odd, doesn't it? Didn't the First World War end in 1918? It certainly did, but the experiment of state ownership of pubs continued until Ted Heath's government of the 1970s passed The Licensing (Abolition of State Management) Act in 1971, and in 1973 the ownership of the pub passed to Warrington brewers Greenhall Whitley.
The Malt Shovel Mk 2 continued to serve the folk of Carlisle for another thirty years before closing in 2003. It was reborn as an Italian restaurant, but this closed in September 2022.
However, it now appears to have reopened, although at the time of typing its website is having a bit of maintenance. If you're in Carlisle and fancy some Selezione di Frutti di Mare Selvatici, or maybe a bit of Pancia di Maiale Croccante, the former Malt Shovel awaits your visit. No Italian for me tonight, though. Haggis, neeps and tatties it will be. Followed by a nice malt whisky. Maybe even two.
The Carlisle Kid's image is copyright and is reused under this licence.
The newspaper extracts are courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive:- www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk.
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