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Paul Hollywood wades into pub row
Celebrity baker Paul Hollywood has defended his wife’s plans to convert the historic pub her family owns into housing.
After 16 years of running the Chequers Inn in Smarden, Kent, Melissa Hollywood (née Spalding) announced plans to shut the Grade II-listed pub back in January, applying for Change of Use to convert it from a public house to a “single residential dwelling”.
According to her, operating the business had become increasingly unviable. The pub itself is owned by her father, Glenn Spalding, and it is in his name that the application was registered.
However, local residents, and Smarden Parish Council, were unhappy with the idea of the 600-year-old pub being closed by the end of this month.
In late June, the so-called Smarden Community Pub Group filed a nomination to Ashford Borough Council for the Chequers Inn to be named an asset of community value.
In addition to citing the history of the pub, the group said that it played a vital role for locals: “Smarden is a rural community, and without the current modest number of businesses currently situated there continuing to exist, the community would undoubtedly suffer.”
Among Smarden Parish Council’s objections is that “the loss of one business sets a precedent for other businesses to follow”.
There is one other pub situated nearby, The Flying Horse, around 100 metres from the Chequers Inn.
Hollywood hits back
The Great British Bake Off judge has leapt to the defence of his wife, whom he married last September, and lashed out at her critics, telling BBC South East: “The vindictiveness from the locals towards the family who have been here 18 years is unforgivable.”
Hollywood also expressed a desire to shake off the critics.
“If the villagers themselves want to get their act together and put a bid in and buy it, that’s fine,” he continued. “At the end of the month it’s earmarked to close because they cannot sustain the money that’s coming in because there’s no money coming in.”
He also claimed that he had provided a “substantial” amount of his own money to keep the business afloat, but that he was “not a charity”. Some reports suggest that the amount of money he invested in renovations and a new car park was around £80,000.
Last year, there were rumours that the-then-Miss Spalding had attracted the interest of another kind of Hollywood, with no less a celebrity than Johnny Depp allegedly considering putting in a £1 million bid for the pub. However, it seems that no deal was struck. The property still appears to be listed for sale on Rightmove for just shy of £900,000.
In spite of the opposition, Ashford Borough Council has granted the Spaldings to convert the Chequers Inn, which has according to some accounts been a coaching inn since the 14th century, into a home.
Anyone with a belief in the paranormal planning on making a bid on the soon-to-be-ex-pub may want to be aware that there is claimed to be the ghost of a French prisoner-of-war from the Napoleonic Wars haunting the building, and it apparently has the strange habit of moving guests’ clothing to different rooms.
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