A disused pub and restaurant in a Herefordshire village is the latest in the county that could soon be converted into a house.

The Castle Inn in Pendant Pitch, Little Birch south of Hereford closed seven years ago and appears to have lain vacant since.

Now in a full planning application, owner Dee Langford is proposing to turn it into a single five-bedroom house.

Accompanying plans show much of the layout preserved of the pub, which previously let five guest rooms upstairs.

Downstairs the bar would become a lounge, while apparently retaining the actual bar, the ladies’ toilets would become the main bathroom and the gents’, an office. The current kitchen and dining room would remain largely unchanged.

Local CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) representative Mark Haslam said he would now attempt to gauge local feeling on the potentially permanent loss of the village pub.

Herefordshire CAMRA has led successful defences of closed but arguably viable pubs in the county also threatened with conversion, such as the Crown Inn in Colwall, and is also working to save The Broadleys in south Hereford, where a conversion plan into a drive-through coffee shop is currently before county planners.

But Mr Haslam said his group only mounts such efforts where there is clear local demand to retain pubs.

The Castle Inn previously held an “excellent” customer rating of 4.9 out of 5 on travel site TripAdvisor, based on 53 reviews, with one calling it “an out-of-the-way gem”.

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Across England and Wales, roughly 2,000 pubs have closed permanently (meaning they were demolished or converted into homes/businesses) between 2020 and 2026. Regionally, the Hereford and Worestershire area has been hit incredibly hard by this trend.