Iconic restaurant building could become housing

The owner of a restaurant once used as a filming location for BBC series Sherlock has applied for permission to convert the building into a four bedroom house.

The Daffodil - a former cinema and bingo hall in Cheltenham - struggled for business after re-opening following the Covid 19 lockdowns.

Croft Capital UK Asset Management Limited said the proposed conversion would bring a vacant building back into use.

It first opened in 1922 as a cinema, with seating for 750 people.

It was designed by prolific Cheltenham architect Leonard William Barnard, with curved windows in the frontage and a mosaic threshold depicting daffodils, and sweeping interior staircases leading up to the first-floor balcony.

The cinema closed in 1963, with the building turning into a bingo hall for 14 years, and then being used as a furniture showroom and store until 1996.

It opened as a restaurant in 1998, with its Art Deco interior returning. It was used in 2013 as a location to film an episode of the BBC drama Sherlock called The Empty Hearse.

Following the lockdowns relating to Covid 19, the business struggled when it re-opened and despite being used to host some Cheltenham Jazz Festival events, it closed for good in December 2023.

The latest plans would see a large living area and kitchen on the lower ground floor, two bedrooms with walk-in wardrobes on the first floor, and two further bedrooms on the second floor.

In a letter of objection to the proposal, neighbour and former owner Malcolm Blunt said he hoped the current planning officers would be committed to protecting and preserving the Daffodil.

But Karl Maguire, who works in a stationery shop on the same street, described the Daffodil as a "big empty void".

"It would be a shame to lose it to housing, but equally it's a long time without it being anything," he said.

Additional reporting by Local Democracy Reporting Service