IT is the pretty pub with the dark past, and one of the great landmarks of Hampstead. 

But the Magdala Tavern – the famous pub where the last woman to be hanged in Britain, Ruth Ellis, shot her boyfriend – faces an uncertain future under new ownership.

The freehold of the pub – which is said to bear the bullet holes of the historic murder – has been bought for £2.1million by a mystery developer based in the British Virgin Islands.

Live-in lessee Christina Baehr, who has run the pub for seven years, said she had been assured that it would remain a pub but probably with some new flats above.

She said: “We are out in September and all the staff are being made redundant. The pub will close then until the new owner’s refurbishment is complete.

“We don’t know how long that will be because we don’t know what is being proposed. I have been told that it will stay as a pub, probably with some new flats upstairs. That’s what I am telling people but of course there is a fear of the unknown.

“People don’t like to see pubs changed, but you they are old buildings and do need to be refurbished. If someone has the money to do it, then it can be a good thing. Pubs are about the people in them, not just the bricks and mortar”

No planning application has been submitted to Camden Council but details of the Magdala sale have been posted on the Land Registry website.

It says that Bow Capital Ltd, incorporated in Tortola, a British territory in the Caribbean that is also a tax haven, bought the freehold for £2,100,000 on April 9.

The pub had been owned by pub group Punch Taverns Ltd since 2003, according to the Land Registry documents.

Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in the UK after the shooting at the Magdala

Leaseholder Ms Baehr said she was given six months to leave or stay on. 

She said: “We were asked if we wanted to stay on after six months, but I thought it’s time to move on. I’m going to move home with my mother for a bit and then work out what to do. Obviously it’s been difficult for pubs since the recession and cost of alcohol in supermarkets and the dine-in deals for a tenner have had all had an effect.”

On Easter Sunday 1955, nightclub hostess Ellis shot boyfriend David Blakely dead outside the pub in South Hill Park. Bullet damage-style holes are said to remain in the wall. Ellis had been dropped off by another lover who had given her the gun and showed her how to use it. After admitting the murder in Hampstead Police Station – which has been shut down – Ellis was hanged at Holloway Prison by hangman Albert Pierrepoint. 

The famous story featured in the films Pierrepoint, with Mary Stockley playing the doomed lover in 2006, and Dance With A Stranger with Miranda Richardson in the role in 1985. 

Ms Baehr said: “The history is obviously so much a part of the place. You get people coming here on tours and they are still trying to get a verdict changed to manslaughter.”

In 2003, efforts by the Ellis family to get the manslaughter verdict overturned failed after a judge said that murder was the only verdict available to the court at the time.