A DISUSED Stalybridge pub could be converted into eight flats if a planning application gets the go ahead.
Karen and Dougan Sidebottom of Ridge Hill Lane based Strawberry Construction, have applied to Tameside Council to develop the Travellers Call on Wakefield Road.
Under the scheme, a third level would be added and the building turned into two-bed properties.
Three would be on the current ground level with a further five as duplexes on the first and new second floor.
The Travellers Call has remained unused since it ceased trading as a pub but is in a prominent location for traffic entering Stalybridge from Ashton.
A blue plaque, which sits on the wall, is likely to be kept, even if the plan is given the go ahead by Tameside Council’s Speakers Panel (Planning) committee.
It commemorates John Buckley, who was born at nearby Cocker Hill in May 1813 and received the Victoria Cross for bravery while working as assistant commissionary of ordnance at the Delhi Magazine, India, in May 1857.
Mutineers against British rule reached Delhi, where Buckley and eight fellow soldiers defending the magazine were vastly outnumbered.
But rather than let the ammunition fall into enemy hands they decided to blow up the building and themselves. Miraculously four of them, including Buckley, survived.
Buckley was captured by the enemy and soon learnt that his entire family had been ruthlessly murdered by the rebels.
He later escaped and rejoined the army, volunteering for all manner of dangerous missions.
After falling ill, he lived for a short while in Stalybridge before returning to India as a major in October 1861.
The final years of his life were spent in London and he was buried in an unmarked grave in Tower Hamlets Cemetery.
His Victoria Cross is at the Royal Army Ordnance Corps Museum in Camberley, Surrey.