FLAMES ripped through an iconic Hereford city centre hotel after a cigarette was carelessly discarded in 1989.
Night staff led dazed and pyjama-clad guests to safety through smoke-logged corridors at the Green Dragon Hotel in Hereford's Broad street after the alarm was sounded as fire took hold on the third floor in October that year.
The Hereford Times reported that there was significant damage in the fire, with one wing of the building "gutted" by the blaze, which an investigation found had been started by a cigarette.
Crews from across the county rushed to the prominent hotel to put out the flames, with one man taken to hospital after suffering smoke inhalation.
With the flames out, then-owners TrustHouse Forte said the repairs would run into many thousands of pounds.
The Green Dragon has long been a feature of the city. There is good evidence to suggest that a tavern named the White Lyon was on the site in 1460, while it is believed there has been a hostelry on the site since 1079.
It is also said to be on the site of a secret subterranean passageway running from the old inn to the river, and said to have been used by Prince Rupert as a means of escape after his defeat by Cromwell at the Battle of Naseby.
Its somewhat chequered history saw the inn on the site, then owned by the Vicars Choral, let to baker Barnebe Smyth in 1644 for £3.5 shillings a year and "one coople of fatt capons" and "one coople of fatt hens".
In 1843, it was bought by the Bosley family of innkeepers, who operated a successful coaching business from the premises.
The hotel has claimed a number of awards through its history, holding a three-star AA rating and listed in the prestigious Egon Ronay hotel guide in the 1980s.
By 1999, the hotel was on the market for £3.25 million, remaining on sale for more than a year before it was taken off the market by Forte in June 2000.
In 2002, the stunning hotel was branded an eyesore by some Herefordians, after spending more than a year under scaffold and netting while rendering work was carried out, with delays blamed on working restrictions and poor weather, but a gleaming facade was revealed when the scaffold came down in August that year.
By the mid 2010s, the shine had gone, with guests taking to reviews website TripAdvisor to complain of run-down rooms, while one particularly acerbic reviewer wrote that "if it was an animal it would be put down", in 2015.
But hope for the future was on the horizon in 2018, when the Grade II listed hotel was sold to a consortium of predominantly Hereford investors., who promised much-needed renovation work would start that year.
And they kept their word, with a multi-million pound revamp starting in 2019.
The hotel now offers 83 en-suite rooms, a restaurant in the remodelled 1920s oak-panelled dining room (pictured above in the 1980s), stylish lounge, and luxurious bar.
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