Chef couple Simone and Randall Blakemore, together with their daughter Grace, have a new vision for the Quarry Hill pub. 

The venue is set to become a cafe restaurant, with a new name and their own spin on the historic pub. 

“We’ve just always liked it,” Mr Blakemore said.

“Little corner pubs just can't survive these days. They need to change.

“We want to renovate it, give it some love.”

The keen new owners plan to pull out the clunky bar and open the area up for dining, as well as reserve an area for functions or weddings. 

They have an 18 month outlook, so many new ideas for the place are not set in stone; they would like to build a verandah all the way around – a nod to the pub’s past – and a Latin American themed-cuisine has been suggested, but that is yet to be decided.

“We just love food, we love hospitality, we love making people happy,” Mrs Blakemore said. 

“We love all the brickwork, the quirky little things, the cellar underneath.”

Though the restaurant is a work in progress, the new venture has already been put to use. 

After buying the hotel three months ago, the chefs have been using the kitchen space to bake loaf after loaf of sourdough. 

The Blakemores say the demand had outgrown the capacity of their Sim’R site and needed more space to create their artisanal breads and homemade chutneys. 

“We’re making a tonne of flour into bread per week,” Mr Blakemore said. 

The corner pub holds a quirky charm – wooden concertina doors, multiple doorways filled in with off-colour bricks, and a series of smaller rooms snaking through the building. 

The building, constructed in 1885, has had a colourful history. The hotel’s cellar was possibly used to store the dead, before Victorian towns had morgues. 

Fires had also raged through the building – evidenced by some of the blackened bricks still present.