A ONCE popular pub in the Triangle due to open as a new food-serving microbrewery will not be open for business until at least April, it has been confirmed.

Brewhouse and Kitchen is in the process of setting up shop at the listed former Eldridge Pope inn the site of which Brewhouse has owned for two years.

The company had initially said it would be open last summer. This was then extended to Christmas and then January but due to ongoing issues with building works the pub won’t open until April.

Co-founder Simon Bunn told the Daily Echo: “We were very much delayed working on a party wall agreement which involved 16 people.

“We have to get the approval and then do some sample digging, then the engineering... There has been a lot of work to do to get this building working again.”

Poole Hill will be the third in the conurbation after Poole and Southbourne.

It also has a pub in Dorchester.

“We thought it was going to be done before Christmas, then after,” Mr Bunn added. “It’s probably the only site where we have had changes to the dates.

“It’s the nature of what we’re doing to take it and get it into a working space.”

Under the plans, the distinctive green and white frontage will remain. However the original Branksome Arms lettering, mentioned in the 1984 listing on the heritage register, does not feature on the drawing. As well as a bar and restaurant, customers can expect copper beer fonts, stripped wood decor and the “biggest beer garden in Bournemouth town centre”, Mr Bunn told the Daily Echo last year.

There will also be Victorian-style lanterns across the front of the building and copper lettering would be used to spell out Brewhouse and Kitchen across the front of the ground floor.

He said: “It’s quite an amazing building where two of the stories are built underground. There will be a three-storey extension on the back.

“It’s been quite a tricky build but it’s going to be a fabulous building once its finished.”

It has been more than two years since the last pint was pulled at The Branksome.