AN ITALIAN restaurant in Weaverham closed its doors for good yesterday after its parent company shut down several sites across the north west.

Casa Matta, formerly the Hanging Gate, shut permanently on Wednesday, September 21.

It was owned by the New Moon Company, which this week has announced that as a result of a ‘re-structure’ of the business Casa Matta will join The Mockingbird in Chester and The Bronx in Knutsford as a number of closures across the business.

Along with the closures, a number of redundancies have been made, although owner Dave Mooney said that the company has ‘done its best’ to rehouse as many staff as possible.

Co-owner of New Moon, Paul Newman, announced his departure from the business on Facebook on Friday night.

Dave said: “We wanted to take the business forward and this will enable us to do so in the future.

“We have had discussions with outside parties. They came in and did a review of the whole business. They said we have to get rid of the loss making sites, Casa Matta and The Mockingbird, which rather sadly resulted in a couple of redundancies.

“The other five, The Old Sessions House, Beef and Pudding, The Lord Binning, The Montgomery and The Old Blind School are thriving.

“As a result of the restructure, Paul decided he didn’t want to be involved going forward. We will be much leaner and stronger going forward.”

Casa Matta, which opened in September 2015, is now up for sale, as well as the New Moon Company website.

Together, Dave and Paul opened eight establishments across the north west and in September last year, spoke to the Guardian about plans to expand throughout the UK.

Dave has assured that it is ‘business as usual’ for the five remaining gastro-pubs and that trade is booming.