A landmark pub in Wolverhampton has suddenly closed and been put up for sale – just months after bosses were told they had to close early following complaints about noise.
The Halfway House on Tettenhall Road is owned by Enterprise Inns which is selling the business – but not the building – for £13,840. The company has advertised the business on its website and is calling for someone to “inject life into this pub business opportunity”. Last year magistrates banned the pub from playing music past 11pm.
Wolverhampton City Council had received a string of complaints from 18 fed-up neighbours amid claims they had kept music blaring from the pub until 5am and even on Easter Sunday.
In October, father and son team Jerry and Jeremy Collins failed in their bid to overturn the magistrates’ rulings.
The duo had claimed they had done “everything humanly possible” to address the problem.
Jerry Collins, aged 50, warned at the time the business could not survive without later entertainment hours.
The venue was particularly popular with students and late-night revellers.
The pub is being advertised as “a three-storey, brick-built property with a side extension that houses a contemporary-styled bar area with leather sofas, wooden tables and chairs and a wall-mounted TV.
Whoever runs it will also have a kitchen, bathroom and four bedrooms but the building itself will still be owned by Enterprise Inns.
Enterprise Inns spokeswoman Vicky Averis said: “The Halfway House will be closed for a short time while we look to recruit a suitable retailer. We will re-open it to the community as soon as possible.”
She confirmed the Collins family was no longer on site but was not able to comment on the reason for their departure.
Enterprise Inns is also still looking for someone to take over Seamus O’Donnells in Wolverhampton city centre which closed a month ago. The company is also trying to sell The Old Still Inn building in King Street.
6 Comments
Another landmark gone - with Beatties on the verge and Eye Infirmary but just a memory, perhaps the answer is to sell the whole city off in one go !!!
Is this a case of another pub going down the swanee, to be demolished to make way for more houses? A ‘local’ pub used to be the heart of the community, it was where every one met for a friendly chat and a drink at the end of a days hard work. Even in those times, when a pub was very often no bigger than the two up/two down terraced house on either side of it, the sound of singing from the happy drinkers and the piano could be heard floating through the street and the neighbours didn’t complain. Times change, and the pub (where they still exist) isn’t so much at the heart of the community any longer. Why go out on a cold wintery night when you can stay at home with the hi-tech entertainment and cheap supermarket alcohol? I can see things from both sides, the pubs need to provide some form of entertainment to keep customers but do they really need to keep the music playing until 5.00am, surely not, it’s a pub in a residential area not a city centre nightclub. On the other hand, if people want a quiet life, free from any noise, either from the sound of customers talking as they stand outside to smoke or the sound of music from the pub, why do they move into a home so near to a pub.
i ueed to love going there….. they should get deaf residents living next to it… stop the fun nazis letting folks enjoy their lifes
please don’t let it turn into flats, our society needs pubs.
Shame that pubs can’t be just pubs anymore. Over priced beer, poor quality food in so many, and cops that act like little hitlers, no wonder the ‘adult’ populatin prefer a bottle of plonk at home.
It’s probably hit the rocks financially due to the smoking ban. Where are all the people who said they’d use pubs once the stinky smokers went? Sitting at home and coming out twice a year - as usual; that’s where! Now they moan about their clothes stinking of chip-grease and vinegar.
Beware! They’ll be banning food-sales in the pubs next. Quite right too, fat lumps that they are. Go home and cook.