Christie’s reported this week that a developer has paid close to the £595,000 asking price for the site of Annie Baileys, the pub/restaurant at Hyde End, the hamlet on the opposite side of the dual carriageway from Great Missenden.

The brasserie on the Chesham Road between Missenden and Chesham has been boarded up for six years.

Owner David Berry told the Free Press the pub had been blighted by HS2. “We opened Annie Baileys in 2002 and were there until we were forced to close in 2012,” he said on Wednesday.

“In the early years it was really successful, we were busy every night, we did well but then we were told the train line was going to go right through us. We were served with a Compulsory Purchase Order.

“You know how it is with restaurants. You have to keep re-inventing them, ploughing money into refurbishments to keep them looking fresh.

“My business partner Mike Cottman and I spent £10,000 in 2006 on a re-fit. We’d been ready to do it again in 2010 but by then there was all the uncertainty over the future. It was dispiriting. 

“There were staff issues because we couldn’t offer job security. There was no point in investing any further money in the business.”

Mr Berry says they tried for six years to get a definitive answer to their questions from the train company.

“Every time we called, the person we’d dealt with before was no longer there and we were passed on to his successor who gave us a different story.

“Finally in 2016 we were told they were going to re-route the line and build a tunnel a mile away from us. 

“They said they wouldn’t be needing our site so we could re-establish the restaurant but by then it was too late, there was no business left. It had been killed off long ago.”

The demise of Annie Baileys will come as sad news for customers who remember the restaurant when it was in Cuddington, the village midway between Thame and Princes Risborough before it was moved to Missenden. 

To be sure of a table at weekends in those days, you had to book.

Mr Berry now has a wine bar and restaurant in Temple Street, Aylesbury and also runs a community-owned pub in Dinton – the Seven Stars - in partnership with another business partner Stephanie Guiraut.

Mr Cottman has also moved on. He owns a separate company unconnected with the hospitality industry.

Tim Widdows who handled the latest negotiations at Christie’s when Annie Baileys was put up for sale by the two former partners says there was no interest from the business community in renovating the building and re-opening it as a pub/restaurant.

“All the enquiries have been from developers who see it as a site for housing. The pub will be demolished.”