A friend of mine lives in the one of flats above this and is hopping mad, to put in mildly. The residents really don't want a Burger king there and, it seems, that this was the intention the whole time.
I agree. When it was the NH&H, it was a reasonably busy pub but, despite this, couldn't make money - it's had a couple of failed incarnations since then too. It's a big building so it won't be cheap plus there's the added cost of it being listed.
It was a gay pub called the New Heart and Hand. Unusually for a gay pub, it sold decent beer - Bass IIRC. Also unusually, for the time, it had a late licence so you could drink after 11.00. The proviso was that you had to be eating, so the staff came round with plates of free sandwiches - once...