History of the Building

History of the Building

The building was erected in 1856 and was for the first 100 years of its existence a Lenten Brethren Chapel. In the 1950s, with congregations declining and costs rapidly rising, the church sold the building to the family of our current landlords, Messrs Mitton.

For the next 30 years the building was used as a farming food and medical supply store, with large feed bins across the back and the lotions and potions running in aisles down either side. This was to serve the farmers trading in the sheep and cattle markets, which were then based on the site of the current Cecil Street Car Park.

Then in the 1980s the building was once again reinvented when Wendy Mitton decided to go into the antiques trade and to use the chapel building as her base. At the time in Carlisle city centre the shopping centre ‘The Lanes’ was being constructed. The old lanes which stood on the site were originally demolished to make way for this development. Wendy and a team of set designers salvaged parts of this section of old Carlisle with the view to reconstructing it within the chapel building, and that is what created our unique interior street layout. As you walk around the interior you will see the original door frames, window frames, guttering, cast iron drainpipes, and stained glass of old Carlisle.

The street scene also contains a red telephone box (our miniature turbine hall), the second-oldest post box in Cumbria and a lead water pump found in Brampton which dates from 1786. The building's original purpose is still not lost though. Many visitors comment on the serenity and peace of the building itself, even on busy days; and we still have the original wooden panelling running the length of the exterior walls, with grooves set into it where the church pews once sat.