The popular Vulcan pub was built in the 1830s and served generations of dockers and steelworkers in Cardiff before it closed down 10 years ago. Stars including Notting Hill actor Rhys Ifans and Manic Street Preachers singer James Dean Bradfield backed calls for the pub to be saved.

Brains brewery stepped in and agreed to donate it to St Fagans National Museum of History. Now it is in the final stages of reopening as a fully working pub – even featuring the urinals, which date back to a renovation in 1915.

Dafydd Wiliam, principal curator of historic buildings at St Fagans, told The Mirror: “Pubs act as centres of community life. We’ve always wanted a pub at the museum.

“We were fortunate enough to interview a woman who was born in The Vulcan in 1915. She told us what the building looked like when she was a child, what kind of customers used it.”

Mr Wiliam added: “Cardiff was a hugely successful coal port. In 1914, it exported the most coal ever; about 20 million tonnes.”

The pub’s interiors and facade were taken apart by dedicated museum workers and placed in storage before being pieced back together. A few exterior tiles were too damaged to salvage by chance the original Shropshire-based manufacturer is still in business and still has the wooden moulds that created the original tiles.

Mr Wiliam said: “We commissioned a whole new set. We were taking down a partition wall and behind the plasterboard was the original wallpaper. It was thick-grained and covered in a layer of nicotine. The original gents urinals from 1915 has also survived. They are now being restored so they can go back in, ready to carry out their duty.”

The building is set to reopen this spring.