The city centre pub was opened by a husband and wife in 2019
13:29, 27 Dec 2025Updated 13:29, 27 Dec 2025
Fiona and Dominic Hornsby opened the pub in 2019(Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
When they were made redundant six years ago, husband and wife Dominic and Fiona Hornsby were eager to make the best of a bad situation so opened their first pub, The Bridewell, in Campbell Square. Since then the former police station has become a popular city centre destination and has even been recognised as CAMRA Liverpool Pub of the Year in 2022 and again a year later.
Fiona told the ECHO: “When you get made redundant, it kind of makes you revaluate doesn’t it? We were quite happy with the jobs that we had, so when you get made redundant, it’s a big shock, so it just makes you revaluate everything, so we just thought ‘come on, let’s do it for ourselves.’ “
Before they had got the keys to The Bridewell in June 2019, Fiona had been an area manager for pub group, Okells, for 15 years. Meanwhile, in that time, her husband, Dominic, had also built up a strong knowledge of the industry after he had helped run the city centre pub, The Fly in the Loaf.
The Bridewell was a former police station(Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
While they have taken over three pubs in the last six years (the Denbigh Castle, The Pen Factory and The Bridewell) Fiona cast her mind back to the early days of running her first, recalling how the years spent in the industry proved a huge advantage.
She said: “Because we’ve ran pubs for so long, we’ve got so many regular customers, who really kindly came in and supported us. There’s customers who we’ve served for years and they all came in to see us and they were super supportive. All of our friends who had a pub bought stuff, because we didn’t have a lot to decorate the walls with, so everyone was just [giving] us stuff that they weren’t using any more, like mirrors and pictures, which is really kind.”
Despite contending with some of the usual teething problems that come with opening your first pub, they were dealt with an unexpected blow just months later.
Fiona said: “The biggest challenge that we had was that we opened in June 2019 and then Covid came along in the March. The panic and the fear when that happened…
The pub has retained a lot of its original features (Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
“We’d finally broken out on our own and we thought that we were going to lose it all. We didn’t, obviously, but it was a really, really worrying time. We got through it and we opened every time that we could in-between the lockdowns.”
However, after also acquiring their second pub a month before lockdown was announced, Fiona believes that the challenges brought about by the pandemic gave them extra resilience for the future.
She said: “There’s nothing that I couldn’t do now, if you can get through that, you can get through anything. We bought our second pub in the February, the Denbigh Castle. We were smashing it to bits, and we were due to open at the end of March. So we had two very new businesses and you don’t have a huge amount of cash in the bank when you start, so it was trying, but honestly, there’s nothing I couldn’t do now, if you can get through that, you can get through anything.”
In the six years since they first opened, Fiona and her husband have been lucky enough to welcome a whole host of celebrities, but there was one very popular British band who were propping up the bar from the very first day.
She said: “When we first opened, we didn’t really have any staff, it was just us two there all the time. I remember we had this gang of nice lads who came in every night for two weeks, this really nice bunch of lads.
“Then about a month later we saw them again every night for two weeks, we thought they were students, but they were Blossoms. We’re not exactly down with the kids, we just thought they were nice lads.”
Fiona the thing that brings her most satisfaction is seeing new friendships formed in the close confines of the Bridewell, a former prison where the socialising spaces are made up of a series of tiny former cells where policemen of old would lock up drunks and troublemakers.
She said: “Because of the nature of it, people are really sociable in there, if two people sit in a cell, then a four can sit next to them. There’s loads of friendships that get made in there, which is really cool.”
The pub has won CAMRA Liverpool Pub of the Year twice(Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
That close sense of community among those who frequent The Bridewell was evident two years ago when Fiona got the shocking news that she had cancer. She said: “The gifts, the cards, it was just trunk loads, everybody was just so very, very generous. It kind of reaffirmed my love for them all, because they do think a lot about you.”
Fiona has now recovered, but customers from across her three venues have continued to show their support having raised thousands of pounds for charity.
She said: “This year, across the three pubs we’ve raised £20,000 for Clatterbridge [Hospital], which is from customers doing little events. That was really cool, being able to give something back to your own city, because we’re so lucky to have that on our doorstep.”
As she looks towards the future, she shared a festive message, explaining that her pub plays an important role at this time of year. She said: “It’s so much fun to see friendships getting made, because obviously this time of year makes you think about it, loneliness is a horrible thing. But, there’s always someone who’ll talk to you and don’t think that you can’t go in the pub on your own, because you can.”