Derelict Walsall pub damaged in severe overnight fire

Four fire crews, as well as an aerial ladder, were called to the remains of The Sneyd, on Vernon Way in the Bloxwich area of Walsall after the fire broke out shortly after midnight on Sunday.

West Midlands Fire Service tweeted at 1.27am: "We currently have four crews from Bloxwich, Willenhall, Fallings Park and Aldridge and an aerial appliance from Walsall dealing with a severe fire at a derelict pub in the Bloxwich area."

The Sneyd was the first of two derelict Black Country pubs to catch fire in 24 hours. On Sunday afternoon a blaze started at The Rookery Tavern in Wood Street, Wolverhampton.

Before its closure, the pub was hit by a spate of burglaries, with the site being targeted five times in six months in 2011.

The pub was put up for sale in 2015, however no interest was registered in purchasing the site until an application to flatten the site and build homes was submitted in May 2016.

Since then a number of housing applications have been put in, but none have come to fruition.

In 2017 an application to tear down the pub and replace it with 21 homes was withdrawn by developers, while in the same year plans to transform the site into a six-bedroom house were approved. However, those plans failed to materialise.

In 2019 plans to replace the The Sneyd with 14 flats - 10 one-bedroom and four two-bedroom - was refused by Walsall Council.

The planning department said the proposal was inappropriate within the Green Belt.