C O N T E X T 1 3 8 : M A R C H 2 0 1 5 19 an appreciation of the Knights Templar (formerly a Union Bank, built in 1865) in Chancery Lane, London. Then there is news of the first Wetherspoon pub to be opened in the Lake District (a former police station and magistrates’ court in Keswick); a piece about a new Wetherspoon hotel in the old Guildhall at Dunfermline in Scotland; and news and photographs of 500-year-old wall paintings uncovered at the Star in Hoddesdon during Wetherspoon’s £1.63 million conversion of this old pub. Conservation of these nationally important wall paintings delayed the opening of the pub and they now form a distinct feature of this Grade II listed building. Wetherspoon admits that more skill and money is needed to conserve and convert listed buildings. The company regularly liaises with local authority conservation staff and employs about a dozen architectural practices to support this work. It displays boards in its pubs carrying information about the history of the building, illustrated with photographs and prints. This treatment is part of the Wetherspoon branding and customers seem to appreciate it. The preservation of historic features, as well as being necessary in its own right, is also a talking point. A case in point is the Grade II listed Opera House,TunbridgeWells. Designed and built for opera in 1902, it became a cinema in 1931 and a bingo hall in the 1970s. It was empty for 10 years before Wetherspoon bought it and converted it into a pub. And what a pub! It still has its seating gallery and boxes, and three or four times a year the pub closes and an opera company is brought in to perform. The conversion of churches into pubs can be more controversial.Wetherspoon has made a good job of the West Kirk in Ayr, which was built in 1845 as a Free Church, and still retains its gallery and pulpit as part of its interior design. One can imagine the great architectural critic Ian Nairn (see page 51) preaching from it, pint in hand.The Man in the Moon in Newport, Isle ofWight, (a £1.86 million redevelopment) and the Robert the Bruce, Dumfries, (a red sandstone chapel which had its external paint painstakingly removed as part of its transformation) are other churches now turned over to a different kind of communion. A former Methodist chapel in Belfast is the latest in a ‘pews-to-pints’ move. The list goes on. The Standing Order in Edinburgh, a Grade A former Union Bank designed in the 1870s in a neo-classical style by David Bryce, retains its bank safe and a host of other features. The King’s Head, Monmouth, was a 17th-century coaching inn reputedly visited by Charles I. In Highgate, the Gatehouse, where Byron and Dickens both drank before it was done over in a mock-Tudor style in 1905, houses an upstairs Fringe Theatre (not run by Wetherspoon). Sheffield has the The Opera House, TunbridgeWells, interior. Live opera is still performed here on occasion. (Photo: Gillian Evans) The Man in the Moon, Newport, Isle ofWight, a former Congregational church of 1848 (Photo: Gillian Evans)
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