Our thanks go to John Reed, of Rheda Park, for this interesting old photograph of the Distressed Sailor pub at Hensingham.

A fine body of men have gathered on the front for a photo opportunity, but what the occasion was we just don’t know. And why is an officer of the law (PC Brown) joining them?

Inns and public houses were historically often used as venues for holding various official meetings and sometimes inquests and court hearings – and lord knows those pictured all look sombre enough for it to have been such an occasion, although one would have thought it would hardly be a time for taking a snap... but you never know.

The couple in the doorway we think are the landlord of the day, Alfred Andrewartha, and his wife Jane (née Fletcher). Alfred’s name is above the door and he was innkeeper there in 1901 and in 1911, which puts a rough date to the image. Note the lovely pebble-stone forecourt, perhaps still languishing there under the modern day Tarmac. Andrewartha is an unusual surname and Alfred, born in Hensingham, had a Manxman for a father (James), though the name occurs more commonly in Cornwall.

James had married a Whitehaven girl, Mary, and been an iron ore miner; Alfred himself had at one time a day job as a boiler-maker.

John Reed tells us the old photo came from the collection of his wife Julia’s side of the family, the Brownes (of Beehive store fame). It had belonged to her Uncle Harold, who lived on Hensingham Road, and it is thought a member of the Browne family is among the gentlemen pictured.

A note in her late mother Ada’s handwriting tells us George Postlethwaite, Ted Gill, Irving Gill, Bob Kerr, ‘Gran’ Rogers, Uncle Harry (Gill), Uncle Joe and Jack Calder, Mr Cragg and J Barwise are among those pictured. The pub itself, probably an old coaching inn, has gone through many transitions over the years and was a popular place for social gatherings in the 1960s with its own darts, dominoes and sporting teams. Nowadays it is home to a seafood restaurant, The Binnacle, continuing in the spirit of its seafaring name, where hopefully diners find themselves de-stressed, rather than distressed!