A well-known Irish pub in east Greenwich could become a hotel if councillors approve plans next week.
Hardy’s Freehouse on Trafalgar Road would be refurbished and have an extra floor built on top to accommodate 10 “apart-hotel” rooms for short-term accommodation.
The developer, MAF Real Estate, says it will retain a slightly smaller pub downstairs, with the lost side bar being given over to an entrance to the hotel rooms.
Planners are recommending that councillors approve the plans at a meeting next Tuesday. Neighbours have filed 28 objections to the extension.
Designs for the new development show the pub under its original name, The Bricklayers’ Arms. It has been known as Hardy’s since the 1980s. While the pub currently has accommodation upstairs, the developer says these have been unused for about a decade.
Previous development plans for the site have been rejected, including a dramatic eight-storey extension filed in 2010, and two more modest plans in the years before that.
The pub was once known for live music, and played host to early shows by Squeeze in the mid-1970s. More recently the side bar hosted the Green Pea restaurant, whose much-loved owner Tom O’Connor died in 2019.
In 2014 Hardy’s featured in the first entry on the SE London blog Deserter, which called it “a friendly old boys’ boozer, a throwback to A Time Before Gastropubs. The bar staff go out of their way to deliver drinks to the auld fellas’ tables if they struggle to walk. God only knows how they get home, if indeed they do.”
The full plans can be seen at the Greenwich Council planning website.
You must be logged in to post a comment.