One of its previous incarnations was as “The Drill Hall”, at some point it was the town cinema. When we came to live here it was, almost unbelievably, a supermarket, run by a wonderful gentleman, in his nineties, still manning the cash point and driving the van, preceding the “new” thing of supermarket home deliveries, by many years. When John died his son continued to operate the butchery for a few months but then had to move on. The building, which had been deteriorating, in spite of some renovations of specific bits, looked to be set to become a town eye-sore, but then something wonderful, and crazy happened. Have a look at this webpage: http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/the-lost-arc/ to see just what a crazy, daft, incredible thing happened. And it really is happening. The photos on the webpage are not quite up to date, the shinny new roof now has a very fine collection of PVA panels. But, not only has that old building been given a new life, but the area around it is improving too. At one point I responded to an update photo on Facebook with the comment that the building looked like a Phoenix rising from rust, because the area in front of the ARC was still filled with crumbling iron sheds. A large house fronting onto Bridge Street, which we had decided was being left to fall down, has been very ably converted into three self catering apartments with off street parking.
This matters to the town a lot because the lane that passes the ARC is a walkway that goes alongside the river Wye, very deep and fast flowing at this point, to access the river side of the castle ruins, a children’s playground and a woodland walk which is part of the Wye Valley Walk
