Market Square and Devonshire Street

Angel Square was re-developed in 1987, much of it on the site of The Exchange Temperance Hotel. In this hotel you ‘exchanged’ drinking for a teetotal life! Exit Angel Square and enter Market Square and Devonshire Street.
Market Square was the site of the Market Cross, Butchers’ Shambles and a building known as The Roundabout. Penrith has been a Market Town since the Middle Ages; King Henry III granted Penrith its Charter in 1223.

Tuesday Farmers Market
The Musgrave Monument, a clock tower, was erected in 1861 as a memorial to Philip (son of Sir George & Lady Musgrove) who died from illness in Spain at the age of 26.

Musgrave Monument
James & John Graham has been a grocers since it was established in 1793. The area directly outside Graham’s shop was called Archers Walk – ‘a place to strut your stuff’. Here also was the site of a two-storey Market Cross till it burnt down in the 18th century.

James & John Graham
Rowcliffe Lane was once a very busy thoroughfare of shops and workshops. This was the main street into town; in those days all went on ‘twa legs or fower’ - wheeled traffic only came along in the 1780s when the adjacent King Street was made for it.

Rowcliffe Lane
The 'George Hotel', formerly the 'George & Dragon Inn' was a stopping point for coaches for many generations. The ‘Dragon’ was dropped in 1715 for fear of being accused of treason. Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender paid a short visit here in 1745 on his invasion of England.

George Hotel
N Arnison & Sons was established in 1742 elsewhere in town. Their present premises once belonged to William and Dorothy Cookson (grandparents of William Wordsworth) and were bought and rebuilt by Arnisons in the 1850s. Here Wordsworth’s mother died. Explore the rest of Devonshire Street and exit by Barclays Bank to enter St Andrew’s Place.

Arnison Drapers