‘Cursed’ Tansley pub and restaurant turned into holiday rental at auction with starting bids of £475,000

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A former Derbyshire village pub and restaurant, recently converted to a holiday let and rumored to be ‘cursed’, is going up for auction with a starting price of £475,000 this week. royal oak house, on the A615 Alfreton Road through Tansley, it went by various names over the years, most recently being known as the Serendib Italian and Sri Lankan restaurant.

Prior to that, the 18th-century building traded as the Matlock Gurkha Inn Nepali and Indian restaurant. The Stone Georgian property near matlock It last operated as a pub in 2016, when it was known as the Royal Oak Inn.

In March 2022, the owners of Serendib submitted an application to Derbyshire Dales District Council to convert the premises into a home and two vacation rentals. The restaurant had been largely closed since the first Covid lockdown in March 2020, so the owners wanted to start a new company.

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The planning application was allowed with conditions in May 2022. Since then, work has been done to divide the property into two vacation rentals. A third self-catering apartment could be built in the former bathing area, subject to the granting of additional planning permission.

There is also owners accommodation, a good sized garden, large car park and a ‘spacious wild flower paddock’ to the rear of the property. Marketed by Sally Botham Estate Agents, the former pub is being sold via a timed auction on the SDL Property Auctions website.

Going into further detail on the composition of the property, an SDL spokeswoman said: “The current accommodation offers three bedrooms, one with en-suite, family bathroom, shower room, large sitting/dining room with library corner, kitchen equipped, laundry room and pantry, two recreation rooms, pub toilets and cellar.

Bidding is now open for bids of £475,000 or more and will close at 2pm on Friday May 26.

Manohar Kunwar, the previous tenant of the then Matlock Gurkha Inn, claimed in 2018 that a series of bad luck that had struck the place was due to a “cursed” three-headed serpent statue and an ornamental chicken foot found on the site.

He said this included power outages, gas problems, flickering lights, declining customers and bad reviews, all of which he blamed on mystery items discovered at the facility. The frightened restaurateur left the items outside and claimed that business picked up immediately. He then he was in talks with a priest to “defuse” the creepy hideout.

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