The future of a Bath pub with a long tradition as a live music venue looks uncertain after it was sold by its brewery because of poor trading.
Ye Old Farmhouse, in Lansdown Road, has had a difficult few years and last spring a lack of customers meant it was forced to reduce its opening hours.
At the time its owner Wiltshire brewery Wadworths said it was committed to keeping it open and the firm's sales and marketing director Paul Sullivan said it had been working with the tenants to try to make the business more popular with locals.
However, this week Wadworths confirmed it sold the pub on January 22.
A spokeswoman said it had been sold to a Mr Matthews, but she said they did not know what his plans were for the future of the building.
Owner of Abbey Ales Alan Morgan, whose brewery is next door to the Farmhouse and who temporarily ran the pub for a while, said it was said to see such well-known venue close.
He said the difficulties had started when veteran landlord John Bradshaw retired in 2006.
"John was the man who had been there for years, he organised all the jazz nights with the big names, they had Nina Simone there once," he said.
"Then it was closed on and off for a while, but by the time they reopened people had found other places to go to."
Mr Morgan said the Farmhouse had also suffered from being out of town and not having other pubs nearby, meaning customers didn't have a "circuit" of places to go and drink.
He added that for a pub to survive nowadays it needed a central location and the continuity of a long-serving manager or landlord that people could get to know.
It is not clear exactly what the new owners is going to do with the pub building but Mr Morgan said he understood it could reopen as some kind of health centres, possibly an osteopath.
