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Gloucestershire Business News

EXCLUSIVE: Work finalised for six homes at historic pub site

The final sign off has been given on a project to convert an historic Cotswold pub into six bespoke homes.

The agreement to minor details for the work marks the culmination of a planning process which began back in 2018, with homes from the project now being marketed with Cain and Fuller with guiding offers at just over £500,000.

Having served pints since the 1700s, the popular Nelson Inn at 70 Gloucester Street in Cirencester closed in July 2019, just ahead of the Pandemic.

The previous September, an application was submitted to Cotswold District Council to change the address for residential use, with plans outlining six homes for the site, two with one-bedroom, three with two bedrooms and one with four bedrooms.

At the time, the pub archive website gloucestershirepubs.co.uk noted: "Crucially, the existing Grade II listed building housing the pub was to be refurbished internally, and not demolished."

Bill and Sue Broad, who had served at the Nelson since 1992 thanked "customers, loyal friends and acquaintances from near and far for your support over the last 27 years".

A decade before, Mr Broad cited the 2007 ban on smoking in pubs as a key factor in reducing trade. At the time, he said: "I'm a non-smoker myself and it's nice without the fumes but it's bad for business."

The legislation "pushed smokers outside like naughty school-children" he said, adding: "It's bad for trade and should have been integrated slower rather than overnight change. I've had to make several concessions on price and to attract customers."

The Listed Grade II pub was historically notable for its on-site brewery and was reported to be the last of its kind operating in Gloucestershire. By 1909, a town directory notes that the brewery had been operating for a century and said: its "fine ales are used and recommended by the leading medical practitioners throughout the district as a pure and wholesome beverage".

Early in the 1900s, the pub was also reported to have hosted a trio of thirsty circus elephants who were brought to the brewery at the back of the pub in need of warm water.

Led by the ringmaster of Sangers Circus, the elephants were brought into a courtyard where they had their fill of water from the brewery's boilers. Sadly, one subsequently died, the location of its body, buried at an unspecified location nearby, remaining unknown.

In September 2018, full plans were submitted to CDC for change of use of the inn to residential. Plans included the development of six houses, two of them one bedroom, three houses two bedroom, and one four-bedroom house. This request has now been agreed.

In a report on the site, CDC Planning Officer Katherine Brommage said that the plans for the former brewery, later used as a hall, were "not objectionable", given the retention of the existing ground floor windows and replacement of the first floor windows with metal (as opposed to timber).

She added: The main public house is a (Grade II Listed) designated heritage asset built in three phases across the 18th 19th and 20th century. While the conversion of the main range to residential use is not objectionable (since the principal concern for historic buildings is that they remain in use and active rather than vacant and decaying) it is acknowledged that the works will involve the loss of the bar feature, the loss of modern partitions and some historic fabric, walling and flooring to facilitate new windows and door openings and to provide staircase to the individual units. Such loss will result in harm but this is considered to be less than substantial."

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