Sneak Preview!

It was like being a guest on Grand Designs.
Iain Burgess, from the Three Tuns, offered to show me round last night.
Men are still working all over the place, and there's a little marquee up on the back patio for carpenters' tools and so on, but the bulk of the work has been done. The bar has been moved from under the front window to where the old kitchen used to be, and they've used floorboards they managed to save from upstairs as the front of the bar. Iain told me they plan to stock 4 real ales, 3 ciders and a variety of lagers. I saw the first barrels of Wye Valley's Butty Bach going in that lunchtime. The kitchen, in the new extension, is huge, and gleaming, and the restaurant will be partly upstairs. The original staircase survived the fire. Looking up from the bar, you can see through perspex panels into the restaurant above, with all the original woodwork retained. The Three Tuns was probably built around 1600 in it's present form, and the builders have stripped everything down to the original materials - huge cruck beams either side of the big fireplace/chimney, and the Victorian fireplaces have all gone, stripped down to the original stone. Iain showed me the space where Lucy's bathroom used to be - now a semi-private space to be used for those intimate dinners for two in a corner of the restaurant. They've even kept some of the original wattle construction exposed, on the stairs - though this is split oak slats (probably oak) rather than thin twigs.
The modern part of the building has been kept very simple, and blends in with the original building surprisingly well, and they've put small lights round the outside of the building pointing straight up and down, which illuminates it very effectively, without being at all garish.
On Friday, they're having a trial run for the kitchens, to do a dinner for the builders, who have done such good work, and on Wednesday 25th is the grand opening, with Lucy as Guest of Honour.