One of Salford's most historic pubs is set to reopen after two decades and a £1.4m restoration.
The Black Friar pub has been through some tough times - it survived an inner-city bypass slicing through the heart of old Salford right next to it.
While surrounding businesses and hundreds of terraced homes have vanished to make way for colossal apartment blocks it has stood firm.
For almost two decades it has been closed and the interior damaged by vandals and a major fire.
But this summer after a £1.4m restoration and a few years as a marketing suite for 380 apartments, which now rise above it, The Black Friar is to return to its origins as a pub.
The plans for the building include a new 200-cover restaurant, due to open this summer.
The Grade II-listed building was built in 1886 by William Ball, in red brick and red sandstone, and quirky decorative stone-work features still survive in its outer walls - including a pair of jolly drinkers.
At the corner of Blackfriars Road and Trinity Way, its interior was wrecked by a blaze 15 years ago but an original oak staircase has been restored and a fireplace.
Developer Salboy, part of bookie Fred Done's property empire, and construction partner Domis, built an £80m apartment block, called Local Blackfriars, on land surrounding the pub which they also acquired.
They have formed a partnership with experienced hospitality operations manager Neil Burke to turn the Black Friar into a pub restaurant.
Neil is currently putting together a team of professionals and overseeing a fit-out with a view to opening late this summer.
The building was restored as part of the development and extended to create a modern glass restaurant with open kitchen, private dining room and a dining courtyard as well as a traditional pub area.
Domis managing director Lee Mc Carren said: "The Black Friar is an important part of the area’s history and it is massively important to us to see the building open and operating and being used by the community.
"We were introduced to Neil by the restaurant consultant Thom Hetherington and it was a great opportunity to create a new hospitality company for the pub.
"We are really pleased to have Neil at the helm – he knows how to run a successful restaurant and is currently assembling his team."
It is a return to Manchester for Neil who worked for many years for the Jamie Oliver restaurant group and has more recently been based in Australia running the world-famous Grounds of Alexandria in Sydney.
Neil said: "It has been an ambition to be able to open a pub restaurant and incorporate all the ideas I have had and honed over the years.
"And to have the financial support to be able to do that in a building as significant as this and hopefully create something very special is an incredible opportunity. It enables the focus at The Black Friar to be firmly on the customer experience.
"We are looking to create an all-inclusive environment, one where everyone is welcome and feels at home. Whether that be a place to enjoy a beer and some nibbles or celebrate a special occasion in the restaurant with a 3-course meal.
"We are aiming to appeal to everyone's tastes, like a good pub should."
Lee added: "Our ambition for the Black Friar is the same as Neil’s– we want it to be the best pub in Manchester, serving not just all the residents around here but being a destination in itself."
The Black Friar will be opening towards the tail end of summer 2021 with more than 200 covers and is expected to create between 40-50 jobs.
In January 2020 it was announced former Manchester House chef Aiden Byrne was to take over the pub.
A planned £2m transformation was to have created a traditional pub interior with wood panelling and open fires in the original building.
But Byrne, who won a Michelin star when he was just 22, then revealed in July last year he had withdrawn from the plan to concentrate his business on the Church Green pub in Lymm, which he owns.
The restaurant was to have been funded by Salboy and Domis with a ‘significant’ personal investment from Byrne and his wife Sarah who would have run the operation as a team.
The Black Friar will join an impressive clutch of much-loved pubs in the backstreets in around the Blackfriars, Greengate, and Chapel Street area.
These include The Eagle, dating from 1848, on Collier Street, and former CAMRA pub of the year, the New Oxford in Bexley Square.
Local Blackfriars provides 380 apartments and penthouses and a new street of town houses around a central landscaped courtyard. Salboy is also behind 115 more homes on nearby Queen Street.
Before closing the Black Friar was a Boddington's pub. There are suggestions that a pub called the Old School Inn was on the same site previously.
