The vacant Lord Binning pub in Kelsall is reopening next summer - with a name that will be familiar to many.

For years the pub was well known to locals as The Morris Dancer, named after its landlord who was a morris dancer in the 1970s.

Well known for hosting Chester Folk Festival, the village's annual music event, many were stunned when the pub closed its doors in April 2010 and it remained shut for 15 months until it was taken over by the New Moon company and renamed the Lord Binning.

It enjoyed a successful six years with chef Dave Mooney and his partner Paul Newman at the helm, and the two took on a range of other projects including Chester's Mockingbird Taproom, but they were forced to close both when the company went into administration.

Since the Lord Binning closed in April this year, the pub has remained vacant - with plans to reopen as The Morris Dancer in summer 2018 by the Brunning and Price company.

They tweeted: "We have just received the keys for a pub called the Lord Binning in Kelsall - and we are thrilled about it! Still planning, but the plans so far mean we would open in early summer 2018 and would return the pub back to its former name, The Morris Dancer.

"We are currently recruiting our chef team who will develop our opening menu once they are on board.

"We're thrilled to have The Morris Dancer as one of the latest additions to the Brunning and Price family. The earliest record we can find of it (so far) is in 1822, when James Cawley paid a fee of £20 to be granted the license for a pub known as The Globe, this pub was then later called The Olive Tree before being renamed relatively recently as the Morris Dancer and then again as the Lord Binning in 2011."

To keep updated on the progress of the new Morris Dancer pub, visit www.brunningandprice.co.uk/morrisdancer