At last it’s over. The chaotic den opposite my house – Lincolns Public House – is finished. After four years of licence hearings, many hours of lost sleep, one near-fatal stabbing and who knows how many people urinating in the street, the local residents can finally look forward to a peaceful summer. However, this has been very hard-earned by the entire community.

My saga with Lincolns began almost as soon as we moved into the area. Of course when we bought our house, my husband and I knew that there was a pub across the road. I’d lived opposite one before and it had been no problem, but we still checked out Lincolns just in case. We popped in for a weekday drink one afternoon and found the place to be very quiet. So then we came back on a Saturday night and stood outside, to see if there were any noise problems. At 11pm we noticed a fair bit of traffic in the street, with lots of people coming and going, but we thought this was alright – everyone seemed to be going home promptly. Then when we moved in, we realised that the traffic at 11pm was not taking anyone away – instead, it was an influx of drinkers coming from outside the area, who were only just getting their party started.

A few months after moving into my new house, I wrote my first letter of complaint. It detailed the nightmares we endured – loud music, screaming and shouting until at least 2am, customers urinating in the street and vomiting in front gardens, drink driving (damaging our car and others) and so on. Re-reading the letter six years later, I was frustrated – these were the same problems we were fighting right up until recently.

One good thing came from the pub – it spurred me to join my local residents’ association and become allied with my neighbours. There are some very strong friendships in our street, and Lincolns has brought us together. It was with other members of the Ferndale Area Residents Association that I appeared as a witness in first the town hall, then the Magistrates’ Court and finally the Crown Court to get the late licence removed from the pub in 2005.

Although things improved to some extent when the late openings stopped, it appeared to us residents that drug dealing – by people who seemed to base themselves in the pub - was on the increase. We might be able to get a fuller night’s sleep, but we were still witnessing customers urinating openly in the street during broad daylight, and lots of suspicious activity involving the exchange of packages which parents in the area simply did not want their children to see. When undercover police officers entered Lincolns they were offered drugs, fake DVDs, and treated to a lock-in. At a hearing last year where the police called for the pub to lose its licence, the managers said they couldn’t bar the drug dealers because they were scared of being killed.

Even without the late hours, Lincolns was still not the kind of place that you would want on your doorstep.

Another party in all this – the owners, chain Trust Inns – were very quiet. They had sent representatives to the various hearings, so they knew what was going on, but they were keen to say that they were hands-off – they just wanted their beer to be bought and the rent to be paid. But a month ago, they suddenly transferred the licence away from the managers of Lincolns, forcing it to close. Finally last week their appeal to keep the pub’s licence was heard, but instead of going into the procedure, Trust Inns came up with a proposal. Lincolns would be closed, rebranded and reopened in the autumn as a traditional pub selling real ale – with new managers of course. It would no longer serve one sector of society, but would cater for all strands of our wonderful community. I and the other witnesses were invited to help set conditions under which the new pub will operate, and we were able to come to an agreement and draw a line under the past. Trust Inns will now have to take more of an active interest, and meet with representatives of the residents, police and council on a regular basis.

I had always known that there would be a pub at the end of Davies Lane – after all, there’s been one on that site for over 100 years. Hopefully now we can work with the owners to make sure it’s somewhere that everyone feels safe and welcome.

As for the rebranding, that’s simple: I think it would be best if Lincolns could return to its old title of “The Elms”. Older residents remember it fondly, and it would be good to have the name return to a friendly community pub with the same spirit.