The market cross in the square dates from 1275, and the square itself still holds the footprint of the medieval market it was built for. Ireby was the oldest market town in Cumberland, with a charter granted in 1236. It is now a small village at the quiet northern edge of the Lake District, and the market has been gone a very long time.
The pub is Emily's Black Lion. It sat derelict for years before the owner of the local tearoom bought it and reopened it in 2016. The wooden panelling inside is made from recycled materials, some of it woodwork salvaged from a local chapel. It is CAMRA listed and has two self-contained holiday lets of its own.
The food is traditional pub cooking, served without ceremony, with curry nights on the rotation. Three real ales are on: Marston's Pedigree, Wainwright, and a regularly changing ale from a Cumbrian brewery. One Tripadvisor reviewer summed the place up as "Proper village, proper pub," which is about right.
The Black Lion is the last of them. At one point Ireby had four pubs. One of the others, the Sun Inn, was a favourite haunt of the huntsman John Peel — the John Peel, of "D'ye ken John Peel," who lived at Caldbeck three miles east and died in 1854. In 2023 a community group formed to try to buy the Black Lion outright and run it as a café, meeting place, produce outlet and arts venue. That effort is ongoing.
There are no shops. For those you drive to Wigton or Keswick.
If you walk south out of the village you climb into the Uldale Fells, the ground behind Skiddaw that people call the Back o' Skiddaw. Great Calva, Knott and Great Sca Fell are up there, quiet and largely trackless. This is the least-visited part of the Lake District, and it feels it. The Solway Plain opens out flat to the north; the fells rise behind you to the south. Caldbeck, John Peel's own village, is three miles east with more fell above it.
There is an old church here too, or what remains of it. Ireby Old Church was built around 1150. When the new St James's went up in 1847, the nave, porch and north aisle of the old one were demolished and only the chancel was left standing. What survives is a steeply arched 12th-century stone tunnel vault. Pevsner called it one of the architectural sensations of Cumbria, and the interior "like nothing else in England." It is now looked after by the Churches Conservation Trust, and you can let yourself in.
Getting here takes some doing. There is no railway and no regular bus. You come on minor roads, either off the A596 from Wigton or over from Keswick by way of Caldbeck.
John Keats passed through in 1818, on foot, in the middle of a walking tour of the Lakes and Scotland. He did not stay. Most people don't. That is much of the appeal.
