Interlude 4

The Wilkinsons and the Griffin Inn, Penrith

Margaret Dean

Licensed premises were the locations of much parish business (see the Preface, Introduction and Chapter 4). In Penrith, the Griffin, a large coaching inn containing kitchens, parlour, dining rooms, lodgings, cellars, brewhouse and stables, was such a place.1 A pre-printed bill for board and lodging submitted to the overseers of Threlkeld shows that, alongside accommodation, the inn offered breakfasts, luncheons, dinners and suppers, beers, wines and spirits, pipes, tobacco, washing, and corn and hay for horses (Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1 Pre-printed bill for expenses at the Griffin Inn, Penrith, submitted to the overseers of Threlkeld, c.1800, CAS, SPC 21/8/11/13

From at least the 1790s the Griffin was run by the Wilkinson family. John Wilkinson married Julia Harrison (1768–1824) at Greystoke in 1789. They had six children, four of whom survived into adulthood. After John’s death in 1801, Julia settled his estate and the lease of the Griffin was offered for a term of nine years.2 In 1811, however, Jollie’s directory listed Julia Wilkinson as the innkeeper of the Griffin.3 She appears to have been the only female proprietor of the inn before it ceased trading at the end of the nineteenth century.4

As well as running the inn, Julia administered the estate of her father after he died in 1818. Applications regarding the letting of his house and thirty acres in Greystoke were to be submitted to her at the Griffin.5 The following year, local newspapers reported that Julia Wilkinson, ‘late of the Griffin’, had married Isaac Hodgson of London at a ceremony in Greystoke. Hodgson was a slop merchant, a trader providing clothes and bedding to sailors.6 Despite the announcement, no such marriage had taken place. The Carlisle Patriot issued a retraction, claiming it to be the ‘invention of some wiseacre’ whom they wished to detect and expose.7

Julia died in 1824.8 The Griffin remained in the Wilkinson family but was again offered for lease.9 None of Julia Wilkinson’s children followed her into the licensed trade. Her eldest son, Harrison (1790–1830), joined the Royal Navy before settling as a surgeon in Hounslow, Middlesex.10 In his will he instructed his trustees to divide the majority of his estate between his siblings Thomas (1797–1860), Mary (1791–1848) and Ann (1800–1865).11 The Griffin made up part of his estate. Dorothy, the eldest daughter of his sister Mary, was the beneficiary of the profits arising from the Griffin Inn.

1 For further details see M. Dean, ‘Wilkinson’s Griffin Inn, Penrith’, The Poor Law <https://thepoorlaw.org/wilkinsons-griffin-inn-penrith> [accessed 13 Apr. 2021]. The blog post is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0); Cumberland Pacquet and Ware’s Whitehaven Advertiser, 8 June 1779, p. 1.

2 Carlisle Journal, 17 Jan. 1801, p. 1; 7 Feb. 1801, p. 1.

3 Jollie, Cumberland Guide and Directory, p. xxxi.

4 Cumberland and Westmorland Herald, 11 Mar. 1893, p. 4.

5 Cumberland Pacquet and Ware’s Whitehaven Advertiser, 8 Sept. 1818, p. 3.

6 Carlisle Patriot, 31 July 1819, p. 3; Cumberland Pacquet, 3 Aug. 1819, p. 3.

7 Carlisle Patriot, 14 Aug. 1819, p. 3.

8 CAS, PR5/11, Greystoke, St Andrew, Burial register, 1813–90.

9 Carlisle Patriot, 17 Dec. 1825, p. 1.

10 London County Directory (1811), p. 1566.

11 TNA, PROB11/1792/175, Will of Harrison Wilkinson of Hounslow, Middlesex, 3 Nov. 1831.