History of Smoke House Yard

3:08pm Monday 3rd December 2007

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The Westmorland Gazette recently reported that Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron had moved into his new offices at Smoke House Yard at kendal. The history of the yard goes back to the eighteenth cetury, as Kendal historian Arthur R. Nicholls describes: "Smoke House Yard is a complex of buildings in Yard 2, Stricklandgate, that has undergone a number of different uses over the years. The present name was given it in November 2007.

Let us begin standing at the head of Finkle Street, facing the building which today bears the title 'Liberal Club' over its fine projecting oriel window. The earliest reference yet found to it is that on Todd's map of Kendal of 1787 where it is shown as the 'Crown Inn', one of the town's coaching inns, having stabling for no less than 40horses. It advertised itself by means of a swinging sign bearing the Royal Crown with gilded colouring.

Heraldic signs were the most common form of identification of inns and the crown was probably the most popular, except in Cromwell's time, of course.

James Jackson, with his wife Ann, was the proprietor in the 1790s and in 1797 the Providential Benefit Society held its first meetings there. In January 1812 James retired from business and the inn was sold to Isaac Rigg who moved from the 'Rose & Crown' inn further down Stricklandgate. Sadly, Jackson died in March. Among his possessions put up for sale was a nearly new hearse!

The inn was a changing post for the horses drawing the many coaches through the town.

One of Rigg's first changes was to establish an Excise Office at the inn. Outside office hours it was used as a dancing school where Mr King taught "the most fashionable dances such as are taught by the first masters in London - Scotch and Irish Dances." He charged one guinea for 12 private lessons.

Two years later Mr Earl took over the school and added waltzes, cotillions, marches, hornpipes, highland reels, minuets, gavottes, Scotch and Irish dances for the ladies, and so on.

In 1816 a dinner was held at the inn at which the subject was the Independence of Westmorland. Following their move from the Market Place Chapel, the Presbyterians assembled in a large room at the inn before moving to the Woolpack Yard Theatre where they set up their church in November 1823.

In 1824 it was recorded that Mr Howard, manager of the Theatre Royal in Lancaster, opened a "neat little theatre" in one of the rooms of the inn which he styled the 'Theatre Royal'. Excessively hot weather and the depression in the weaving industry helped to cause the season to be "one dull monotony of failure and disappointment."

The then landlord, Mr Bowman, tried the same in 1826 with as little success.

There were changes in ownership of the inn over the years until, in 1868, when Slater's directory gives the landlady as Mrs.Walker, the inn was sold.

The cottage at the rear was described in an earlier sale notice as "fit for an ostler". Town Councillor Mr. Benson offered to buy the property to give the town a Post Office at its very centre but this failed and the inn was converted into business premises.

According to a deed of 1869 the front of the building became a shop of two parts with offices upstairs. One part of the shop was owned by a tea merchant, John Farrer, with a partner, Christopher Thompson, while the other part became the grocer's shop of John Butterwith, a prominent Kendal businessman who had previously owned a shop, J. Butterwith & Son, on the other side of Stricklandgate, and later had a bacon store in Sandes Avenue.

The business expanded and by 1882 John had died leaving his son, Charles, to carry on the business. He bought out Farrer & Thompson's part of the premises and joined partnership with Hunter as provision merchants and bacon and ham curers.

It seems likely that the smoke house was built during this period, possibly on Charles Butterwith's initiative. The use of the shop was changed from time to time Behind Butterwith's premises was their counting house and warehouse and behind that the cottage with its courtyard. The cottage has a cellar with a fine vaulted ceiling.

In the courtyard is a device in light coloured limestone thought at one time to be the Prince of Wales Feathers. It was reconditioned in 2001 by local architect Robert Tarbuck as such. It is now thought that the original design might probably have been a crown to accord with the name of the inn.

On the northern side of the yard, according to a plan of 1912, was a motley collection of buildings comprising a corn warehouse, store room, bake house, bacon washing house, stables, sheds and a shed with the drying house at the end where there had originally been a garden. These various buildings, apart from the drying house, were adapted over the following years to accommodate shops and other businesses.

Morris & Co (Kendal) Ltd. took over from Butterwith's as provision merchants and cheese factors, specialising in high class mild-cured pale and smoked hams. In 1910 the shop was a chemist's run by Taylor's Drug Company, later to become Timothy Whites and Taylor's.

The Liberal Club had leased the upper room as a club room and their lease was due to expire in 1913 but the previous year the entire premises was auctioned at the Rainbow Hotel and the Liberal Club was able to buy them.

A caretaker's house was also included in the sale and this might have been the present cottage. The upper storey of the main building comprised a reading room with the well-known bay window overlooking the top of Finkle Street, two large billiard rooms, a committee room and office. One of the billiard rooms might have been the "neat little theatre" of 1824.

There was a flat on the second floor at the front of the premises. The first bay window, with its stone surrounds and balcony and the surrounding sliding sash windows was installed around the turn of the nineteenth century. They were replaced by the current steel balcony and metal frame windows probably in the later 1940s or early 1950s.

The smoke house in the yard, to use its present name, is a typical example of at least two such smoke houses that existed in Kendal in the 19th and 20th centuries and is an unusual survivor of a short-lived Cumbrian industry.

It was built between 1885 and 1898, not only for smoking but for the air drying of joints of pork and other end products. It is marked as a drying room or shed on existing plans and has retained its external appearance.

The curing, smoking and drying of meat to preserve it was important before the days of the refrigerator.

The smoke house, to use its present name, at the end of the yard is a tall, narrow building of limestone, tall to allow the smoke inside to swirl around the hung meat, and situated to ensure air flow outside and smoke clearance, built with two chambers, one for drying and the other for smoking.

Two louvred cupolas on the ridge of the slate roof allowed the escape of smoke and hot gases. Inside were two storeys above a basement dropping down to four feet below ground level in which the fires of oak chips were lit to smoulder to produce the required smoke.

The walls of the chamber were blackened by the fires and their smoke and a vertical metal ladder was attached to the side of the wall. Before the redevelopment it was possible to see remnants of the hooks and ropes in the smoking chamber, it being necessary to hang the meat high as a precaution and to seal the space as much as possible against the predations of vermin, the slatted median floor having disappeared long since, probably during the fire.

There were windows, those on the west side, facing the prevailing wind, being set lower than those on the east to maintain ventilation.

The Smoke House served the valuable purpose for over 50 years of the preservation of meat before the invention of refrigeration which - important to maintain supplies of such food during the winter months.

The drying shed was, as its name indicates, for the drying of bacon and similar meats after washing and removing the salt from the cured meat. When it was adapted for smoke curing is uncertain. It might always have had the dual use.

It fell into disuse during the second world war and in the 1990s vandals caused a fire which destroyed the roof of the building and probably the intermediate floors.

It stood, almost a virtual ruin and was in serious risk of demolition but, fortunately, was re-roofed in its original style and materials and has now been sympathetically restored for retail use again, a wonderful link between Kendal's past and future.