A Witham pub will be sold off as part of a £10 million deal by current owners JD Wetherspoon.

The Little Elms, in Dorothy Sayers Drive, is part of a 17-pub package being sold to the Laurel Pub Company, which plans to operate it under its Champion estate brand, offering a local pub feel with sports viewing and socialising.

The Little Elms opened as a Wetherspoon's pub in November, 1998, after an eight-week, £60,000 refurbishment, which decorated the pub with paintings and pictures relating to the history of the area.

However, news of a possible sale of The Little Elms came when JD Wetherspoon bought the 15th century Batsford Court Hotel, in Newland Street, in 2001.

Wetherspoon's spokesman Eddie Gershon said: "The Little Elms has been a good pub for us but it is one of the smaller Wetherspoon's, which we are selling because they don't fit in with Wetherspoon's style of larger pubs in city and town centres.

"We will be keeping the other pub we have in Witham, which was opened more recently and is more in the style of what we have now."

The pub will be taken over by Laurel in mid July.

Published Friday, June 13, 2003

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