Brewery to reopen historic pub in Northampton town centre

4 March 2024

News image — Work has been under way on the historic site for a year

Ollie Conopo/BBC Old derelict building surrounded by scaffolding and four men in hard hats — Work has been under way on the historic site for a year

A 200-year-old brewery will be reopening a historic pub as part of a £3.5m town centre regeneration project.

Phipps Northampton Brewery Company (NBC) will be running the Old Black Lion, a Grade II listed coaching inn close to Northampton's railway station.

The pub is the centrepiece of a scheme put together by the Churches Conservation Trust (CCT), which is relocating to the site.

Equipment will be installed to allow some beer to be brewed on the site.

Oliver Conopo/BBC Large buckets of plaster and paint — Money for the refurbishment has come from the lottery, West Northants Council and other sources

A hundred years ago, the Phipps company ran the Old Black Lion, a pub originally built in the 1600s and then reconstructed following the Great Fire of Northampton in 1675.

The pub closed in 2018 and became a derelict shell that suffered several break-ins.

The Churches Conservation Trust (CCT), which looks after the adjacent redundant church of St Peter's, stepped in to save it.

It came up with a £3.5m project, partly funded by the National Lottery and West Northamptonshire Council, to reopen the building as a pub and community space.

Ollie Conopo/BBC Greg Pickup standing in front of a Phipps sign. — Greg Pickup from the Churches Conservation Trust said Phipps NBC were a "natural choice"

Work got underway to restore the site to its former glory, and now an agreement has been signed to get the pub up and running as soon as the construction work has finished.

Greg Pickup, the chief executive of the CCT, said Phipps NBC were "a natural choice".

He added: "They're invested in the town, they've got a heritage that's intricately linked to Northampton - it just feels like a brilliant fit."

Oliver Conopo/BBC Inside of an old building showing two exposed stories and scaffolding — OMI Architects, based in Manchester, and Crosby Granger drew up the plans for the pub's reconstruction

Alaric Neville from Phipps NBC said: "[The pub] could so easily have gone.

"It was very close to being demolished, and the work that the CCT have put into structurally making it sound again has been the basis for everything that's come afterwards.

"They've saved this building for the town."

Ollie Conopo/BBC Alaric Neville from Phipps with Jeremy Phipps. — Alaric Neville from Phipps (right) with Jeremy Phipps, an eighth-generation member of the brewing family

Tom Stainer, the chief executive of the Campaign for Real Ale, said: "Too often, pubs are seen as obstacles to regeneration and they're the first thing that are knocked down, so a really forward-looking initiative like this is fabulous and we'd like to see it replicated across the country."