It is now just a pile of broken bricks, lumps of concrete and old planks of wood, but in years past this was once a favourite spot for Southampton people.

The Bassett Hotel at the junction of Burgess Road and Butterfield Road has now been demolished to make way for a new development of homes, but many locals will recall visiting the pub that at one time had extensive gardens.

Time has been called for the last time and now a bulldozer rakes over the debris where regulars had enjoyed a pint in the pub that could trace its history back more than a century.

When The Bassett served its first beer, the surrounding area was far more rural as Southampton's suburbs rubbed shoulders with thatched cottages, tree-lined roads and village life.

One of the most unlikely facts about the hotel was that for 30 years in the late 1800s and early 1900s the pub boasted of having a bear called Miskka, originally from Russia, which developed quite a taste for beer.

One day in 1877 she escaped and made a dash for the nearby common, but she was recaptured and taken back to the pub. Unfortunately, Miskka became dangerous and was finally shot on July 18, 1907.