Two brothers teamed up to create a community hub, a lifeline for many - and a place for a great pint
When a building closes, it can be hard to see what future it has as it lays dormant and unused.
In the Pennfields area of Wolverhampton, the former HSBC bank building on Birches Barn Road had been consigned to that fate, to rotting away and being unused, but suddenly received a whole new lease of life in May 2018 when it was bought by two brothers with a vision.
Mark and Steve Wright bought the building and spent time and money converting it into The Starting Gate, a micropub which has become a thriving community hub and a safe place for anyone and everyone.
Steve Wright said he and his brother had come together following the death of their father in 2017 and started talking about future plans when the idea of the pub came up.
He said: "Mark has worked in pubs and clubs and managed casinos of cruise ships for years and came back when we lost our father and started running Penn Bowling Club up the road.
"We were having a chat one day with a few pints of ale and he knows how to run a pub and a bar, so I suggested that we chuck in some money and look around somewhere for somewhere we could turn into a micropub.
"We were looking around and found the empty bank, so had a look around, saw the spiral staircase at the back and thought it would be ideal as we'd looked at little bookmakers where you can go really small with the micropub."
After buying the building, Steve and Mark began the work to refurbish the building and turn it into a pub, with Steve saying it had taken four months and thousands of pounds to convert it into a bar.
