THE Left Bank development will be familiar to many Herefordians, home to a popular cafe, De Koffie Pot, and regularly featuring in pictures of floodwaters.

But before the prime riverside site became a busy venue, it was home to Mead and Tomkinson, a motorcycle and car dealership belonging to a family who built and fielded motorcycles for iconic races such as the Isle of Man TT and the Le Mans Bol D’Or.

But as the 1990s drew to an end, the former dealership was demolished, and Dutch entrepreneur Albert Heijn’s vision for a high-end leisure complex in Hereford took shape.

Opening to customers in 2000, the bar and restaurant complex overlooking the river endured a chequered history after its founder Dr Albert Heijn sold the business in 2007.

It resulted in the venue shutting in 2009 before a second effort to make the business work saw it close suddenly before Christmas the following year.

Then owners, Nottingham-based Bramcote Holdings, placed it on the open market with a guide price of £1.25million in 2013, and the site remained closed until 2014, when it was bought by Cathedral View Investments. It was reopened under new leaseholders, the Waring family, later that year.