TODMORDEN Old Hall restaurant could soon become an outlet for brewing industry giants J D Wetherspoon.

The owner of the grade two-listed building, Nick Hoyle, confirmed he and his wife Madeleine had received an offer from Wetherspoon bosses, which they had decided to accept.

He said: "The Old Hall is a magnificent building, and we have spent a fortune on it over the years, particularly over the last two, but we have decided to sell up and recharge our batteries.

"We are now in our tenth year at the Old Hall and we've been working about 80 hours a week for about 50 weeks a year, and we decided we were ready for a break.

"If we continued doing as we have been doing, it would remain just as demanding as Madeline and I like to be "hands on."

The couple began running the restaurant in 1998 and bought the building, once an Elizabethan manor house, in 2004.

A spokesman for Wetherspoon Brewery, Eddie Gershon, said the brewery had been looking a the possibility of buying a site in Todmorden for some time.

He said: "We have pubs in neighbouring towns of Burnley and Halifax, and as our customers will know, we serve restaurant-quality food, which is available all day."