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The future of the Simonstone Hotel is currently hanging in the balance. The doors to the Simonstone Lane pub were closed this week and recent plans for a £400,000 renovation scheme appear to have been scrapped. A statement from Tetley Walker Ltd. read “We planned to renovate the Simonstone Hotel as a pub with facilities for family dining, but in view of the council’s plans to route the Read/Simonstone bypass near to the pub, it is no longer a suitable location for this type of development. The pub’s future is currently being reconsidered”. Residents had been previously told that work on the pub would create 60 extra jobs and provide a new restaurant, bar, play area and extra parking spaces. The pub was built in the 1870s as a hotel for the new railway which passed through the village. Plans for the Read/Simonstone bypass would mean that the pub was effectively in a cul-de-sac, with traffic only able to reach it from Whalley Road.