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Picture source: Brian Norman

The Cumberland Wrestlers was situated at 4 Currock Street. This pub is now used as a fireplace centre.

The building was completed on 3rd October 1938 to the designs of Harry Redfern and closed as a pub in 2004.

Mike Tuer (April 2014)

My mother’s family lived next door to this pub since the 1930’s. There was once an overhead bedroom over the archway to Iredale Brewery which joined the 2 buildings, my 2 uncles shared that room. There was a fire, and the new revamped Wrestlers was built. I still remember the big wooden gates into the brewery yard, and I have the keystone from the original entrance archway, an Iredale ram’s head. Would like to donate it to Tully house if they are interested...? The Iredale Brewery had closed when I was tiny in the early 50’s, but a good working shirehorse street-cleaning stable was still there, with a horse called Duke, and a fat pony called Teddy. Duke emerged early in the morning with horse brasses chiming, sparkling and clinking onto the cobbled streets. There was a farrier and wheelwright, and a garage which stored loads of giant green glass acid bottles in small individual cages outside. Behind the Brewery was the railway line, with a very busy signal box on Rome Street, near the gents outside toilets built into the sandstone walling on the way to the gas works, which clanked all the time due to gasometers rising and falling. It was a coking plant, so the area permanently stank of acrid fumes, which invaded your home and cloyed to every item of fabric. Before almost all local housing was demolished, all the local folk crowded into the pub for a sing-song at the weekends. The public bar was for men, there were spitoons and sawdust. There was a snug, a lounge bar, a large function room with a piano, and an off-licence. Since the early 50’s, a large homely ‘Aunty Maude’ ran the pub, with her hair in a turban, and her snappy spaniel dog Molly. We had no hot water unless the fire was on, so we were allowed to get bucketsful from the Wrestlers. Early sixties ‘Aunty Maude’ left, and ‘cigar-smoking’ besuited Robert and glamorous bouffanted Nellie arrived, they had 2 daughters. That place was buzzing, never a dull moment, with the Horseman's from the corner shop leading the entertainment at the weekends, we all sang along into the late 60’s, early 70’s. Juke boxes arrived. Bar food (ie scampi and chips in the basket) was introduced, modernisations happened, and my Uncle parked his Reliant Robin in the adjacent garage. Sadly, row-by row, terraced housing was demolished, the Metal Box factory disappeared, no local clientele any more, and no parking. Despite heroic efforts by new landlords, trade fizzled out, so it became firstly a carpet place, now a fireplace centre which used to be at the top of Water Street. My old family home is still there next door, not totally modernised, so many happy memories....

Pauline Gardiner (November 2017)

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