Old Cumbria Gazetteer - Greyhound Hotel, Shap


	Greyhound Hotel, Shap
	Greyhound Hotel
locality:-	Brackenber
locality:-	Shap
civil parish:-	Shap (formerly Westmorland)
county:-	Cumbria
locality type:-	inn
coordinates:-	NY56651423
1Km square:-	NY5614
10Km square:-	NY51

	BJT55.jpg Modern innsign, a hound. (taken 22.8.2005) BJT54.jpg (taken 22.8.2005)

evidence:-	old map:- OS County Series (Wmd 14 14) placename:- Greyhound Inn
source data:-	Maps, County Series maps of Great Britain, scales 6 and 25 inches to 1 mile, published by the Ordnance Survey, Southampton, Hampshire, from about 1863 to 1948.

evidence:-	old map:- Ford 1839 map placename:- Greyhound
source data:-	Map, uncoloured engraving, Map of the Lake District of Cumberland, Westmoreland and Lancashire, scale about 3.5 miles to 1 inch, published by Charles Thurnam, Carlisle, and by R Groombridge, 5 Paternoster Row, London, 3rd edn 1843. FD02NY51.jpg "Greyhound" item:- JandMN : 100.1 Image © see bottom of page

evidence:-	probably fiction:- Trollope 1864 placename:- Lowther Arms
source data:-	goto source chapter 38 The inn at Shap "... He made up his mind to see Kate, and with this view he went down to Westmoreland; and took himself to a small wayside inn at Shap among the fells, which had been known to him of old. ... He himself reached the place late in the evening by train from London. There is a station at Shap, by which the railway company no doubt conceives that it has conferred on that somewhat rough and remote locality all the advantages of a refined civilization; but I doubt whether the Shappites have been thankful for the favour. The landlord at the inn, for one, is not thankful, Shap had been a place owing all such life as it had possessed to coachinng and posting. It had been a stage on the high road from Lancaster to Carlisle, and though it lay high and bleak among the fells, and was a cold, windy, thinly-populated place, - filling all travellers with thankfulness that they had not been made Shappites, nevertheless, it had had its glory in its coaching and posting. I have no doubt that there are men and women who look back with a fond regret to the palmy days of Shap." "Vavasor reached the little inn about nine in the evening on a night that was pitchy dark, and in a wind that made it necessary for him to hold his hat on to his head. 'What a beastly country to love in,' he said to himself, resolving that he would certainly sell Vavasor Hall in spite of all family associations, ..." "... getting himself in before a spark of fire which hardly was burning in a public room with a sandy floor, begged that the little sitting room upstairs might be got ready for him. ..." "... Vavasor was, by the road, about five miles from Shap, ... She [Kate] could, indeed, walk, ... but walking to an inn on a high road, is not the same thing as walking to a point on a hill side over a lake. Had she been dirty, draggled, and wet though on Swindale fell, it would have been simply a matter for mirth; but her brother she knew would not have liked to see her enter the Lowther Arms at Shap in such a condition. ..."

evidence:-	old text:- Harper 1907 placename:- Greyhound
source data:-	HP01p112.txt Page 112:- "..." click to enlarge HP0109.jpg "SIGN OF THE "GREYHOUND," SHAP." "... Still stands the old "Greyhound" inn of coaching days, as you enter the village [Shap]. And not only of coaching days but of times earlier, as the tablet over the door, dated 1703, proclaims. This was the inn, doubtless, at which" HP01p113.txt Page 113:- "Prince Charlie called, on his way, and found the landlady a "sad imposing wife." The weird greyhound sculptured on the tablet somewhat resembles the Saxon idea of a horse, as carved on White Horse Hill, in Berkshire." item:- JandMN : 1055.10 Image © see bottom of page

evidence:-	database:- Listed Buildings 2010 placename:- Greyhound Hotel with Milestone and Mounting Block item:- date stone (1680)
source data:-	courtesy of English Heritage "GREYHOUND HOTEL WITH MILESTONE AND MOUNTING BLOCK / / MAIN STREET / SHAP / EDEN / CUMBRIA / II / 74171 / NY5666514244"
source data:-	courtesy of English Heritage "Coaching Inn, now hotel. Various datestones recorded: Kitchen fireplace inscribed August the 27 1680 with initials R. & W.A.; bar fireplace 1696 with initials A.W.; on panel over carriage arch 1703 with initials A.W. & W.W. &bas-relief of a greyhound. Later additions and alterations. Initials are those of Whinfell family whose crest was a greyhound. Wet-dashed rubble on plinth. Graduated slate roof with stone ridge. 2 storeys, 7 bays overall; wing (1680) projects to rear. 4-bay 1696 addition: Panelled door in open,flat-roofed porch with cast-iron columns; recumbent sculpture of greyhound on roof probably by Thomas Bland of Reagill. 2 tripartite sashes to each floor on left and one above. Symmetrical 1703 extension to right: Central segment-headed carriage arch now part-blocked with fixed window; sash to each floor on either side. All windows with glazing bars in stone surrounds. Rendered mid and end chimneys. Milestone with shaped head, to right of entrance, is probably mid C18 for Turnpike. Painted black with lettering picked out in white: Kendal X6/Penrith Xl/Miles (sic). Stone mounting block to right of former carriage arch. Cottages adjoining south return not of special interest."

	hearsay
	The Sedgwick Club, an undergraduate geological society at Cambridge, was formed 1880. Its field trip in 1882 was to the north west of England and they stayed at the Greyhound Hotel, Shap.
	There is a sketch of them in the Sedgwick Museum; item SGWC2/2/2

	BJT56.jpg Old house date:- "AW 1703 WW" and a hound. (taken 22.8.2005)

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