Gallery
Former pub up for grabs for £350,000
Hilary Cox, nee Thompson, in front of the building in 2005. This was the year Mrs Thompson opened it as the Cottage pub, decorated with some of her partner's family history items including their links to the fishing industry and lifeboats. Picture: Archant Library - Credit: Archant © 2004
An historic former cottage hospital with planning permission for conversion to eight apartments is going under the hammer.
The former hospital and later Cottage pub in Louden Road, Cromer. Picture: David Bale - Credit: Archant
The Grade II-listed building at 8 Louden Road, Cromer, will be auctioned in Norwich on Wednesday, February 12, with a guide price of £350,000, plus fees.
The listing on the Auction House East Anglia website reads: "This prominent building is located close to the centre of the town with attractive views over Cromer including the sea and church.
"It is only a few minutes' walk to the beach and sea front.
"It was formerly the town's hospital. Over the years the building has had a variety of uses, including a Conservative Club and most recently a social club and public house."
One of the rooms inside the former Cromer hospital and Cottage pub in Louden Road, Cromer. Picture: Courtesy of Auction House East Anglia - Credit: Archant
According to Mary Northway, a former chairman of the Cromer Community Hospital League of Friends, who died in 2017, the hospital was built in 1888 thanks to the "generosity of a Mr Collison".
It was closed when the hospital moved to its current site in Mill Road in 1932.
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Mrs Northway wrote a history of Cromer Hospital, where she recalled a friend inviting her to tea in a part of the former hospital which had been converted to a home.
She said: "We sat in the garden room, which she told me used to be the morgue - as I recall, cupboard doors high in the wall, were where the bodies came through from upstairs.
The former Cromer hospital in Louden Road. When this photograph was taken in 1966 it was occupied by the North Norfolk Conservative Association and G.L.Burdett, TV rentals showroom and stores. Picture: Archant Library - Credit: Archant
"I think there must have been a chute as the stairs are very narrow."
The building was later used as a Conservative Club, and then as the Cottage pub, which opened in 2005 and closed in June last year. North Norfolk District Council has granted outline planning permission to convert the building to six two-bedroom flats and two one-bedroom flats. However, members of the Facebook group Enjoy Cromer More have suggested the building be put to another use. One person commented: "I thought it would make a good Wetherspoons."
Another said: "[An] American-style diner with licence and live music would be nice."
And someone else suggested: "A soft play area for kids. Something for the younger generation would be good."
One of the rooms inside the former Cromer hospital and Cottage pub in Louden Road, Cromer. Picture: Courtesy of Auction House East Anglia - Credit: Archant
The auction is in the Sunningdale suite at Dunston Hall Hotel, Norwich, at 11am.
One of the rooms inside the former Cromer hospital and Cottage pub in Louden Road, Cromer. Picture: Courtesy of Auction House East Anglia - Credit: Archant
One of the rooms inside the former Cromer hospital and Cottage pub in Louden Road, Cromer. Picture: Courtesy of Auction House East Anglia - Credit: Archant
Mary Northway once visited a part of the former hospital that was being used as the garden room of a private dewelling. It was formerly a morgue. Photo: Karen Bethell - Credit: Archant
An archive photo of the former Cromer hospital in Lounden Road. Picture: Archant Library - Credit: Archant
