Landlady’s plea for pub saviour

2:54pm Wednesday 21st May 2008

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A RENOWNED York landlady today made fresh calls for her old pub to be saved, as potential buyers eye up the city centre premises.

The Bay Horse, in Marygate, looked doomed when owners Wolverhampton and Dudley won the right last year to turn it into flats and offices.

But the building has since changed hands and is now up for sale for £500,000. It is being marketed as having potential to re-open as a "food-led venue".

Former landlady Eve Briggs, now 89, said today: "If I was well, I would be there like a shot again. It was my life; it really was. I would like it to be either a pub or a hotel."

She said the Bay Horse had everything, with a car park nearby, a riverside location, and the Museum Gardens just across the road.

"What more could one want?" she said.

Eve and her husband Arthur ran the pub from 1951 to 1986. The initial tenancy cost them £1,000 but they then paid just £1 a week in rent for the next 20 years.

She said: "In two weeks' time it is our 63rd wedding anniversary. Wouldn't it be a lovely present if someone would buy the Bay Horse to turn it back into a pub?"

Leeds estate agent Colliers CRE is handling the sale of the pub, on behalf of Scottish & Newcastle, which bought the building from Wolverhampton and Dudley last year.

Katie Astbury, of Colliers, said today: "There is a lot of interest in the property. It has been under offer on more than one occasion but not followed through. It's currently under offer again."

The Bay Horse, which is Grade II-listed, was built in 1893-4, from designs by WG Penty. It survived for more than a century, before closing in 2003.

Various schemes were brought forward for the listed building, before Wolverhampton and Dudley finally secured permission last summer to turn it into offices and flats.

A council planning committee said the loss of the pub was regrettable, but given the lack of alternative proposals, they had no choice but to grant permission.