Kentmere
Hotel / Inns of Kentmere
Temperance Hotel
(from C&WA&AS, vol. LXXXVII article on the slate quarrying industry in Westmorland):
William HUTCHINSON, was keeper of the Temperance Hotel in Kentmere in the 1870s.
Excerpt from "A Lakeland Valley Through Time" published by The Staveley and District History Society, 1995, edited by Joe Scott:
In Kentmere there was in the 1880s and 90s a Temperance Hotel, and in 1887 drunken scenes outside the nearby Low Bridge Inn led the Kendal Justices, at the request of the Kentmere Vicar and Churchwardens, to refuse to renew its licence. Jane and Susannah SHARPE, the owners, appealed right up to the House of Lords, but they lost and there has been no pub in Kentmere ever since.
Mr. William BLAND of Kentmere Hall, farmer and churchwarden and Poor Law Guardian gave evidence that he had seen men who had been drinking at the Inn staggering in the roads and that had been a common thing since he went to Kentmere Hall six years ago. The policeman did not come to Kentmere more than once a week. During Sunday afternoon in Church he had seen turning out of the Inn almost as many people as there were going to Church.
Joseph ADDISON said that one day in the summer of 1886 he saw five navvies lying on the road drunk.
The Court decided that there was not enough evidence to refuse the licence for disorderly conduct, but they refused the licence for remoteness from police supervision and the character and necessities of the place and locality.
Quarter Sessions Report Westmorland Gazette 29th October 1887. The Kentmere slate quarries were prosperous at this time, and quarry labourers, mostly not locals, were clearly a serious problem for the Kentmere community.
Low Bridge Inn
(from 1881 census)
John GILPIN, 31, was the innkeeper.