SOME of the North-East's most familiar watering holes have changed hands for the third time in six months.

Enterprise Inns yesterday announced it has agreed to sell 35 of its managed pubs to Olivegrange.

Solihull-based Enterprise bought the outlets last month as part of a group of 183 mainly Northern pubs secured from Whitbread in a deal worth £115m.

For its part, Whitbread snapped up the former Vaux pubs, making up what was Swallow Inns and Restaurant when it secured the remains of the dismembered Vaux empire in January.

Enterprise, which specialises in tenanted pubs, always said it would sell as many as 40 of its new acquisition.

The ones to go will be those it deems unsuitable for conversion into landlord-run boozers.

Among the 35 sold yesterday to Olivegrange, a newly formed company backed by the private equity arm of Prudential, for £50m, were alehouses and bars across the North-East and North Yorkshire.

They numbered landmarks such as Humphrys in Darlington, Bar Zantia, the Stapleton Arms and the Yellow Rose in Middlesbrough as well as Chaplins, Chesters and Bar Mondo in Sunderland.

Almost 100 Wearside jobs will have been lost by the end of the month with the closure of Swallow's old Inns and Restaurants headquarters.

That blow will come almost a year since Swallow closed its historic Vaux brewery in Sunderland city centre after a management buy-out bid failed to save it.