From 1961 my parents ran The Queens Hotel on Burley Road. I worked for them in the bar until 1985 when I my first son was born. My parents had always looked out for the community, particularly a family who lived in the house behind the pub.

After my parents left, there were two more landlords and then the brewery put the pub up for sale. After we discovered Tesco’s had bought it me and my sister asked the people who were doing the refurbishment if we could go in and look around. On entering we looked at each other, because our parents would be turning in their graves, it was such a mess. Pulled up floorboards, stripped wires. The papers came and took our photograph with the pub in the background. I went back one more time, after it had become a Tesco’s.

A member of staff took me upstairs and it felt so weird. I told them “this is making me feel queasy, you’re coming up into what was our living room with a staircase that wasn’t there.”

What was my bedroom and my parents bedroom had been turned into a staff dining room and office space. Another room, was now a kitchen for baking the bread. There was a great space downstairs in the cellar, that would have been ideal for their freezers and storage. As children we’d learnt that if it was going to rain we had to run to the cellar and put buckets down, because it leaked. Tesco’s had blocked it off.