Jimmy McGreath outside  the Sir Richard Steele in Haverstock Hill

A POPULAR pub is being put back just as it was during its glory days – after its former owner bought it from receivers selling off the assets of a defunct chain.

The Sir Richard Steele pub in Haverstock Hill will rise again tomorrow (Friday) night under the management of publican Jimmy McGrath, who first ran the Belsize Park local four decades ago. His family has been involved with the The Steeles – as it is best known locally – since the 1980s until they were forced to sell it.

But Mr McGrath, who first ran the bar 1980s, collected the keys on Friday and has spent the week readying himself for an emotionally charged reopening. He said: “We are overjoyed and we will restore it to its former glory, bring back the madness, bring back the joy – bring back The Steele’s.”

A new notice is set to be erected on the facade, but Mr McGrath is not changing the famous pub’s name. He said: “We’re going to put up a massive sign saying ‘Under Old Management’.”

Mr McGrath said: “There are a lot of pubs closing down, but if the management is good enough they can work.” The Steeles has a long and illustrious history, opening in Victorian times. It was the haunt of many faces in the 1960s and 70s, including the likes of Oliver Reed, Dudley Moore, Peter Cooke, Jimmy Greaves and George Best. In the late 1980s and 90s, new pop and TV stars from the Britpop era made it their local, including Liam and Noel Gallagher, Chris Evans, Billie Piper and a host of British actors.

Mr McGrath’s son Kirk and business partner Paul Davies had to sell the pub after the 2008 banking crash when they discovered they had been miss-sold a business loan. It was later owned by Faucett Inn, who turned the upper floors into flats after a long battle with planners.

The company’s assets were handed over to administrators LSS last summer, opening up the opportunity for Mr McGrath to buy it back. He said he had persuaded LSS to remove the pub from a requirement to buy three other Faucett Inn bars at the same time – including the Black Cap pub in Camden High Street.

“I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. I struck a good deal,” said Mr McGrath, who also owns the King William IV in Hampstead.

He is taking on a 20-year lease and a grand opening party inviting former regulars back inside is due to take place tomorrow (Friday). The pub will host parties and events in its back room, and serve food as well as a range of alcohol.

Mr McGrath with the old portrait of Sir Richard Steele

Mr McGrath said the return of the pub comes with a mix of excitement tinged with some sadness.

He said: “I am really looking forward to welcoming back so many old friends, old regulars, and new ones too. But I have to say, there are some who came in who are no longer with us. “I remember so many – there was a musician called Tony Ashton, from Ashton Gardner and Dyke, who did the song Resurrection Shuffle and had a massive hit. It will be sad not to welcome him back through the doors. “There are so many who have missed out on 15 years of great Saturday nights in the Steeles because of what happened. I am really looking forward to seeing people, coming back in.”

The aristocrat the pub is named after – an Anglo-Irish writer and politician, who died in 1729 – had always cast a beady eye on the proceedings in the pub, from a full-length portrait. When the pub was taken over the painting was sold to a regular who could not bear to see it lost. But McGrath has tracked it down and said: “Dicky himself is back – and he’s going on the wall where he always was.”

While many of the other trinkets, curios and arty objects the pub was famous for have been dispersed, there is one piece that could not be sold – a ceiling painting completed by a regular in the 1980s. Mr McGrath is particularly pleased it has survived.

He said: “When they asked if they could do it, I said yes – as long as they put my two grandchildren in. He lay on his back like Michelangelo doing the Sistine Chapel. I’m pleased to say my grandchildren are still in place.”