Phoenix Tap

This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 20 July 2022 to update the name and address, amend the description and to reformat the text to current standards

NY 0336 1/21

MARYPORT HIGH STREET (west side) No 66, Phoenix Tap

(Formerly listed as The Broom Vaults Public House, HIGH STREET)

19.6.73.

GV II Maryport is a mid-C18 Cumbrian town and port, succeeding a small settlement and harbour known as Ellenfoot (Alnfoot), established on a planned grid pattern by Humphrey Senhouse (1731-1814) to serve the local coal mining and iron industry and function as a minor shipping point. The town officially became known as Maryport in 1756 after Humphrey Senhouse’s wife, although it had unofficially been referred to as such since the 1750s. During the C19 the town and port expanded to serve the local iron and steel industries as the town’s shipbuilding industry developed, and by the mid-C19 coal exporting had declined and the railway was introduced. The port and town remained important on the west Cumberland coast but declined with the cessation of major industrial activity from the late 1920s. Maryport has been known as a destination for sea-bathing since the late C18.

The High Street runs north to south along an elevated ridge, which forms the historic core of the town, and may have much earlier origins than the mid-C18 planned town, even potentially utilised as part of a Roman road from the fort to the River Ellen. The grid street pattern was laid out by the mid-C18 at the dipped junction with Shipping Brow and Senhouse Street and historically it was a mixed area of higher status residences and small commercial businesses. By the early C19 it formed the main north-south orientated throughfare, with Crosby Street, through the town. This building (currently - 2022 - known as the Phoenix Tap) incorporates three separate early-C19 buildings, with different window surrounds to the ground and first floor. It was a combined residence and wine and spirit dealer’s premises run by John Hewetson and Hewetson and Thomlinson until the late C19. By the early C20 the building had become a public house known as the Spirit Vaults, and then later Broom Vaults.

Two-storey early-C19 stuccoed building (cut as stone) with a stone-slate roof. The ground floor, from north to south, has plain pilasters between a shopfront of two windows and a door with a rectangular three-light fanlight. The frontage to the public house has a central door with a rectangular fanlight and a window set either side separated by wide pilasters and brackets supporting a fascia and cornice. To the left (south) is a window with a moulded surround and a passage door. The first floor has five stone window surrounds with cornices comprising a central double sash window and single sashes to either side

Listing NGR: NY0349536553