It's taken months of planning and a huge amount of sheer hard work but The Sun Inn at Rastrick is set to open its doors again within days.
The pub which is perched on the junction of traffic lights at Dewsbury Road and New Hey Road has been shut for months after it was sold by Enterprise Inns to Steve and Mandy Gorman at auction.
Mandy, who lives in Bradford, said: “My husband loves doing up pubs as his way of relaxing and we came to see this one.
“We came in for a drink to see what it was like and Steve was keen to go ahead with it but I wasn’t. But he talked me round like husbands do.
“I could see the potential and I wanted to create a modern but homely pub that I would like to have a drink in myself.
“I wanted people, when they come here, to feel as if they are sitting in their own living rooms.
“Steve loves taking things to pieces and putting them back together and that is what we have done here.”
But Mandy revealed that the couple almost let the pub slip through their fingers when it came up for auction.
She said: “On the day Steve couldn’t go and I got in to the auction room just as it was coming up to be sold so it was a close-run thing!
“I remember bidding for it and ringing Steve when the hammer came down. I told him: ‘I’ve got it, I don’t know how but I have got it.”
The pub has been shut since last July and a huge amount of renovation has been carried out since then with Steve taking out several internal walls downstairs and turning the upstairs accommodation into a stand-alone dining room.
Ten staff will be employed once the pub reopens on September 5.
Overall the pub will be able to seat 70 diners and leaseholder Ian Isaacs is hopeful that “the freshly cooked, gastronomic food with a twist” will prove a hit.
As for the beer there will be two cask ales though Ian says he is going to rotate them in a bid to find out which customers prefer.
He added: “Although I’m from Bradford my family have a close association with Huddersfield. I know quite a lot of people from here.
“Twelve years ago my dad, Paul and brother Craig used to have Herberts bar in Cross Church Street, it was formerly Isaacs.”
The pub has an interesting history with lurid suggestions that at one time the pub was originally a gaol and prisoners were marched out via an underground tunnel to be hanged on some nearby scrubland.
And it boasts its own well though when someone scuba dived down into it to find what was there he was underwhelmed to discover that rather than hidden treasure there was only a pair of spectacles!
