Coming soon: The new Five Bells

George writes:

I live a couple of doors away from the White Hart pub on New Cross Road and as you can imagine was very pleased to see that it is to be revamped under new management.

With the White Hart, the Brookmill, the Rose, New Cross House, the Fat Walrus and the Sail Loft all opening in the recent past we are spoilt for choice in (and around) New Cross at the moment.

One refurbishment that has flown under the radar a bit is the Five Bells, a little further down New Cross Road. It's been closed since mid January, with one lone sign saying it was to under go 'a light refurbishment under new management'. All the windows have been blacked out with newspaper so it's impossible to see what's going on inside. It seemed as though it was as the sign suggested; likely to open again with the same vibe as before (working man's proper old school boozer type of place), which is fine by me.

However, I have started to see 'Five Bells' stickers pop up around New Cross. They are about the size of an iphone and quite modernly designed. This and the inability to see inside have caused me to wonder whether there may be more than just a light refurb going on, as the stickers seemed totally uncharacteristic of the pub in it's current incarnation. The only mention of it's closure I could find was on a Millwall blog (used to be a Millwall pub aparently), but this didn't shed much light on what is due to replace it (although could explain the stickers)

Does anyone know anything about what is happening to the place?