Temperance Hall -- former home to Keighley's teetotallers group -- is to become a pub.

JD Wetherspoon is investing £1.7 million to transform the historic town-centre site.

Work should start early in October on the development, which will create 40 full and part-time jobs.

A licence for the new pub, which will be known as The Livery Company Inn, was granted yesterday at Bingley Magistrates Court. Planning permission has already been given.

The pub, which should open to the public next March, will be music-free and about one third of the customer area will be designated as non-smoking.

There will be wheelchair access and a specially adapted toilet for customers with disabilities. John Hutson -- managing director of Wetherspoon's, which has about 620 pubs across the UK -- said: "We are delighted to have been granted a licence for a pub in Keighley.

"We are confident it will be a great asset to the area."

The Temperance Hall site -- at the junction of North Street and Albert Street -- was bought by the Wakefield-based Walker group in 1982 for £100,000 and was converted into a bingo hall. It was closed in 2000 and put on the market in May of that year for £250,000.

The plot earmarked for development also houses four shops, one of which is still trading.

The new pub's name is derived from the fact that in the 1890s the site was owned by the corporation and partly occupied by a cab man's shelter at the front and town hall livery stables at the rear.