A LEGENDARY café which served the likes of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones on their UK tours could be demolished after 70 years serving stars, truckers and motorists.

Plans have been submitted to replace the Silver Fox Café beside the A48 near Newnham-on-Severn with two commercial offices and an industrial unit, creating up to nine jobs.

The transport café, which launched in 1947 and was bought at auction eight years ago for £280,000, ceased trading in 2016 and has been empty since.

But back in its 1960s heyday, a stream of

top entertainers, pop groups and actors called in for egg, bacon, chips and a mug of tea on their way to and from South Wales, before the M5 and Severn Bridge were built.

As well as the Fab Four and the Stones, callers at the Severnside café in Broadoak might find themselves dining next to Richard Burton, Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey on their way to their Welsh homeland, plus the likes of singer Matt Monroe, Status Quo and other musicians en route to shows in Cardiff,

The Beatles played Lydney Town Hall on August 31, 1962, staying the night at the town’s now demolished Feathers Hotel – just four days before first recording with George Martin at Abbey Road and rocketing to fame.

And a jacket once belonging to drummer Ringo Starr was even auctioned by Bonhams in London in 1993 for £220, complete with a “receipt in pocket from Silver Fox Café, Newnham-on-Severn, for egg, chips, bread, butter and tea.”

The catalogue noted: “Has been in the possession of the current vendor for 20 years, when Ringo Starr became too fat to fit into this jacket, and so his mother, Elsie Graves, passed it on to the son of the present owner.”

The Beatles reportedly continued to call in at the Silver Fox en route to Cardiff, playing their last ever full concert on British soil in the Welsh capital on December 12, 1965, while other bands followed them through the café door on tours, including the Stones, who stayed at Monmouth’s Beaufort Hotel in 1964.

But with the Silver Fox’s stellar heyday long since gone, developer Nick Powell has now applied to put the site to a “sustainable use.”

Named after its previous use as a farm breeding silver foxes, it was the last remaining traditional roadside café along the A48 between Gloucester and Chepstow before its closure.

A plan was passed in 2008 to knock it down and rebuild the café, alongside a new house, but that lapsed.

Submitting the new proposal, planning agent Brian Griffin told Forest planners: “The application is for regeneration of what was once an iconic café on the A48 that had been used by famous 1960s pop groups including the Beatles.

“The site now needs a new sustainable use, in what is a very accessible and sustainable location.”

In recent years, café owners had struggled to make it successful and the business had been closed for some time, he added.

However, Newnham parish council has objected to the plan for two-storey offices and a 350m sq industrial unit, claiming it is a rural area, not semi-urban, and the development would spoil the view entering Newnham from Gloucester.

With future proposals in the pipeline for two more units on the site, councillors said neighbours would suffer noise and light pollution.

Newnham resident Mike Penny called it “inappropriate for the location and a gross over development” on a flood-risk site.

William Tallents ad­ded that the development would raise the risk of accidents on the straight stretch of the A48 that was already “used for unofficial racing”.

The café was “a landmark”, he added, that should be listed given its historical association with entertainers and entertainment, including dancing.

Neighbour Judy Setter said: “The Silver Fox is not a listed building, but it is iconic. The proposal is to demolish it and to replace it with buildings that are totally out of keeping with Broadoak.”