SCURLAGE: Old Countryman pub to be bulldozed for 21 affordable homes

The bulldozers are lining up for the Countryman.

The boarded-up Scurlage pub, which shut in April 2019 as the Monksland Bar and Grill, would be flattened to make way for 21 affordable homes under plans now out for public consultation.

Developer Hale Group is working with housing association Codi, formerly Pobl, and every one of the homes would be affordable.

But the plans do not say they would be kept for local people.

Homes for the housing register, no mention of a local connection

The homes would go to people who meet the requirements of Swansea Council’s housing register, the developer’s planning statement says.

Nowhere do the planning documents restrict them to people from Scurlage or Gower.

The statement does argue the scheme meets the council’s policy for affordable homes “for local needs”, which says homes must go to people who meet the council’s “occupancy criteria”. It does not say what those criteria would be.

A legal agreement is expected to keep the homes affordable “in perpetuity”, it adds.

The plans are for four one-bedroom flats, 11 two-bedroom houses, three three-bedroom houses and three four-bedroom houses.

It is the second former Gower pub in a matter of weeks to be cleared for housing. Swansea Council’s planning committee voted unanimously on 8 September to let the Greyhound at Oldwalls, near Llanrhidian, make way for nine homes.

Four of those will be affordable. Llanrhidian Community Council had objected to them being offered as shared ownership instead of going to a housing association, but the developer’s agent told councillors that Beacon Cymru Group had now agreed to take them on.

Backing the scheme, committee member Cllr Peter May said it had long been a problem on Gower that people could not stay in the area from one generation to the next.

The Countryman scheme would be social rent throughout, with Codi as the partner.

A nightclub, a stage and 500 covers

For anyone who never made it through the doors, the Countryman was far bigger than it looked from the road.

It had around 500 covers, according to a viability report written for the developer: a 200-cover lounge bar with its own stage, a 90-cover restaurant and a 230-capacity nightclub with a DJ booth.

Takings had been sliding for years. The report puts turnover at £327,117 in 2003, falling to around £165,000 a year by 2013, when the pub was “loss making”.

One viewing, not a single offer

Nobody wanted it. The pub was on the market from January 2020 until the middle of 2025, drawing around 16 enquiries, one viewing and no offers, the planning statement says.

It had already failed to sell twice, according to the viability report: at £595,000 in 2007 and at £395,000 in 2013.

It is now agreed to be sold to developers for £650,000.

Surveyor Kate Robertson of Fleurets, who wrote the report, calculates that anyone reopening it as a pub would lose about £34,000 a year.

“I am of the opinion that the property does not have a credible or economically sustainable future trading as a public house,” she says.

Since it shut, village drinkers have made do with the South Gower Sports Club bar, which opens Thursday to Saturday evenings and costs £10 a year to join, the statement notes.

The field across the road still waiting for its homes

Just 35 metres away, across the B4247, a field has been earmarked for local-needs affordable housing in Swansea’s local plan. No planning application for it has ever come forward, the statement says.

The developer argues its own scheme is the better bet: a brownfield site instead of farmland, and 21 affordable homes against the 13 required on the field.

Too crowded for Gower, the council said first time round

The first version squeezed in 27 homes. In June 2025, Swansea Council’s planners told the developer it was too dense for the Gower AONB and asked for more evidence that the pub could not survive, according to the statement.

The scheme was cut back and a play area added, and later council advice welcomed the “better placemaking”. Highways officers also asked for a pedestrian crossing on Monksland Road, which is now in the plans.

The two-storey homes would be finished in pastel render, with heat pumps instead of oil or gas boilers.

Got a view? You have until 22 October

Comments can be emailed to monkspath@simply-planning.com, or posted to Simply Planning Ltd, 302 Creative Quarter, 8a Morgan Arcade, Cardiff, CF10 1AF, by Thursday 22 October.

The full planning application then goes to Swansea Council, which would consult again before any decision.