“We have retained it as much as we could to keep that look,” said Mr Gribbins “It was very important to the locals and customers that it kept that shape. With everything we uncovered there were moments we worried.” The main bar has been retained at the Chain Locker (Image: Sally Adams) However the rest of the site is “unrecognisable”. The kitchen has been moved to the ground floor of the Shipwrights with a bar and restaurant upstairs, accessed from the stairs in the Chain Locker. It now includes seven guest rooms and two balconies have been added, providing views of the harbour and water that have probably not been seen since the site was an engineering workshop. “The rest of the site is so difficult to access, we can see why other businesses struggled in the past,” said Mr Gribbins. “We had to do everything carefully, it was a very gentle process. Heritage consultant Sam Mayou, with the hand painted wall paper that was discovered during the work (Image: Sally Adams) “As we uncovered different layers we found several stories, but also a lot of problems. Usually we would flood a site with manpower to get a project finished, but we could not do that here because so much was unstable. “We are pretty sure the locals will be over the moon with how it looks.