TESCO wanted to turn the celebrated Sir Richard Steele pub into another supermarket, the New Journal can reveal.

The supermarket chain was eyeing-up the Faucet Inn-owned building in Haverstock Hill, Belsize Park, earlier this year.

A Tesco spokeswoman said: “We are not interested in that site now. It was one site that we were looking at, but having decided what’s best for customers, we haven’t decided to take this forward.”

The company is already due to open one of its “Express” stores a little bit further up Haverstock Hill, in the former HSBC building across the road from Belsize Park tube, and has another branch in Heath Street, Hampstead, and England’s Lane. 

A rumour about an imminent sale to Tesco was circulating at protest outside the company’s headquarters in George Street, Marylebone, on Friday. 

The demonstration was called by regulars of the Steele’s, the Dartmouth Arms in Dartmouth Park, which has been closed since January for a “refurbishment” and the Black Cap in Camden Town, which suddenly shut down last month.

Politicians holding placards included Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, Labour Highgate ward councillor Sally Gimson, the Green candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn Dr Rebecca Johnson and Conservative Belsize ward Councillor Jonny Bucknell. 

Cllr Bucknell told the protest: “We need a place to relax and in comfort. We need the Steele’s preserved!”

There was chanting of “Save Our Steele’s” before Simon Happily, who used to run a quiz night event in the pub, took the microphone and said: “The Black Cap closed a week and a half ago and was a pub for more than 200 years. It was renowned gay venue for 50 years. Faucet Inn do not see community pubs, they see profit.”

The majority of people at the protest were regulars at the much-loved Dartmouth Arms in Dartmouth Park, which has been closed since January for a “refurbishment”, but many fear it will never reopen. Many have started drinking in the Truffles deli, which is next door to the pub, and whose owners joined the protest. 

Faucet Inn did not respond to requests for comment this week but its director, Steve Cox, last month adamantly told the New Journal that the pub “is not closing”.

He is appealing the council’s decision in November to reject his application to turn the upstairs function room into a 10-bedroom hotel. 

Regulars had written to the council urging them to throw out the proposals, which they branded an “act of cultural vandalism”. 

The planning appeal was due to be heard this week but was been postponed due to an “administrative error”, according to Town Hall officials. 

The Steele’s was brought by Faucet Inn’s property company, Kicking Horse Ltd, in 2011, for £2.1million.