Woollahra councillors battle to save Paddington pub The Four In Hand

RESIDENTS furious at losing their favourite drinking hole to developers have been thrown a potential lifeline. Councillors allied with residents in the fight to save Paddington’s Four in Hand Hotel will try to have the famous drinking hole protected by heritage listing.

A group called the "Members of the Peoples Republic of Paddington" are opposing the sale of the Four in Hand hotel in Sutherland st, Paddington.

RESIDENTS furious at losing their favourite drinking hole to developers have been thrown a potential lifeline.

Councillors allied with residents in the fight to save Paddington’s Four in Hand Hotel will try to have the famous drinking hole protected by heritage listing.

Hoteliers Mitchell and Ashton Waugh are set to transfer the Four in Hand’s pokie and liquor licence to ­another venue and sell the two-storey building as a house for $6 million, just three years after they bought it. Local residents are furious, and claim local inner-city pubs are falling victims of Sydney’s real estate market.

Publican Mitchell Waugh is set to transfer the Four in Hand’s pokie and liquor licence to ­another venue. Picture: Jonathan Ng

The former Windsor Castle hotel was converted into a private residence and sold for a suburb record of $11.85 million in 2015.

But The Sunday Telegraph can reveal Residents First Woollahra councillors Har­riet Price and Luise Elsing will push for the building to be heritage listed at the next council meeting later this month, to bring it in line with similar Paddington pubs the Royal Hotel, the Lord Dudley Hotel and the Village Inn, as well as the Golden Sheaf and the Rose Bay Hotel.

The Residents First party holds five of 15 seats on the council, each of whom have taken a pledge to “vote against over-development”.

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Residents First Woollahra councillor Har­riet Price, with sister Jessica Rowe, is pushing for a heritage listing for the hotel. Picture: John Appleyard

“Pubs are essential to the character of Paddington, just as much as our iconic terrace houses,” Cr Price, who is the sister of journalist and personality Jessica Rowe, said to The Sunday Telegraph.

“It’s been a social spot for 100 years and we need to ­ensure Paddington’s heritage is respected and continues to be observed.”

An online petition calling on people to “stop developers destroying our heritage and our community” has attracted more than 5400 signatures.

However, even if the pub is heritage listed, experts doubt that will have any effect on turning it into a private home and would even leave wiggle room to build a third floor.

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According to 35-year veteran architect and heritage town planner Paul Rappoport, it’s highly likely to win heritage protections but that would only safeguard the building’s facade.

“It’s definitely a heritage building and representative of the general characteristics of Paddington as a place and the period in which it was built, but turning it into private residence is fairly permissible, though there’d be strict controls on how the building could be changed,” Mr Rappoport said.

“(Developers) would have to keep the facade the same, both upstairs and downstairs, but there’s the possibility of adding a third storey.”