Fancy one at the Lamb? Sadly no longer possible. Not for a drink, of course, given that the pub has been shut for over four years. However, in early November, there will be an opportunity to go back inside to relive old memories or even to buy one of the houses now available for sale in the former Lamb and Flag building.

North Residential, the estate agents who are selling the houses, and developers, Ashfield Homes, are staging an open day for potential buyers between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Friday 8th November. There’s no need to book – just turn up and take a look round.

‘Bishop Monkton Today’ was given an exclusive tour of the new development which comprises two semi-detached homes in the old pub building and three more houses behind. One is a conversion of the former holiday cottage just behind the pub and two new houses have been built on the old pub carpark. Four of the houses have gardens; the cottage conversion has a fenced in patio.

Inside the right hand semi-detached house, it is impossible not to be transported back a few years to imagine yourself in the bar of the Lamb on a busy Friday night. Now, though, both sides of the old pub have been transformed into a pair of three-storey homes, each with a small back garden. Click on our pictures to see the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of the inside.

Round the back, the two new houses are set at the bottom of the old carpark at right angles to each other. The previously rather uneven carpark has been levelled and gravelled to provide carparking spaces, all with EV charging points, for all five new homes.

The fifth house, the cottage conversion where former Lamb owners Carol and Trevor Pawson previously lived, has already been sold for a reported price of around £365,000. The semis in the old pub are being marketed at £500,000 and the two larger houses at the back at £695,000.

The Lamb closed as a pub in March 2020 at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. There was an attempt to turn it into a shop and café but that came to nothing. Carol and Trevor’s initial planning application for a housing development on the site was turned down by the former Harrogate Borough Council but that decision was overturned by a planning inspector. Work began on the site last year and is now to all intents and purposes complete.

So why not take a look yourself on November 8th?

To see the estate agent’s brochure for the development click .

The BM Local History Group made a film in 2020 about the history of the village pubs and, fortuitously, filmed in the Lamb just weeks before its closure. You can see the film on the Local History Group website