5 Kirkland

Between Yard 3 Kirkland and on the east side of in the township of Kirkland

Curwen, 1900 p155-6

Two doors lower down (from 1 Kirkland) , to the south of the yard still called by the name, was the "Old Ship" standing recessed back, bearing the sign of a ship with full sails set. It seems difficult to account for this name, which is more commonly met with on a quay side; and one can only imagine some seafaring captain settling down here with hard-earned savings - probably from the neighbouring port at Milnthorpe - and setting up "just one more house" for the thirsty souls of Kirkland.

Unfortunately there is no date attached to a will in which Abraham Garnett, of Beethwaite Green, devises to his son William, of Kendal, "all that messuage and tenement situated in Kirkland, and know by the name of the 'Old Ship Inn'.

The questionable glory of this last named inn departed when the "Black Bull" opposition house - kept at different times by Kit Ion, Ben Hurd, and old Adamson - was opened immediately across the way, with its pictorial sign of a life-sized head and neck of the ferocious animal. The old inconvenient premises could not compete with the more respectable-looking building which had risen up against it, and thus the "Old Ship Inn" fell to pieces, and in it's place "Betty Shaver," the female barber of Kirkland, set up her business. Using the vaulted cellar at the back of the shop as a warehouse for coal, she retailed out to her neighbours baskets full of this commodity, and cleansed her hands on the lathered features of her "next-turn" chin.