WORKMEN have begun stripping out a devastated pub ahead of its re-opening after it was badly affected by the December floods.

Builders have removed walls and flooring inside The Watergate Inn, in Walmgate, after the owners' building insurance was cleared to fund the extensive repairs.

The unrecognisable interior will soon be replaced with an upgraded bar and three ground floor guest rooms will undergo a refurbishment before the estimated re-opening date over the Easter holiday.

Landlady Maria Fooks-Taylor (pictured below last year), who runs the pub with her partner, said: "It's going to be slightly different when we open.

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"We are having the whole of the ground floor walls and floors taken out and the bar will be completely removed."

The pub was badly hit by the flooding and the owners were forced to move most of their belongings into the car park before cleaning them or throwing much of their furniture and household items away.

This gave opportunistic thieves the chance to rifle through their possessions and heap misery on the owners as they struggled to piece their lives back together.

The landlady attached a strongly worded warning to her front gates which branded the offenders "scum" and informed them they had been caught on the pub's CCTV system.

However, Mrs Fooks-Taylor, who took over the former Five Lions pub in 2015, says she can finally start to be optimistic after a troubling three months.

"We are a lot more positive about things," she added.

"The ground floor needed work so the bar will look a lot better, and this was work that we needed to do because the bar looked tired.

"We can see some light at the end of the tunnel now.

"We are still taking it day by day but we are getting there."