Bitter blow for phone box pub bid

Officials at Guinness World Records have dashed the hopes of villagers in the UK town of Shepreth, who hoped the watering hole they created inside a disused phone box might claim the title of smallest pub in the world. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

Villagers who turned a redundant red telephone box into an alehouse for a night in the hope of claiming a world record for the UK have been dealt a bitter blow.

Record-keepers said The Dog and Bone - opened in Shepreth, Cambridgeshire, earlier this month - did not qualify as the world's smallest pub.

Officials at Guinness World Records said the 3x3ft ex-phone box would have had to be licensed and open regular hours in order to be called a pub.

They said the Smallest Whisky Bar on Earth in Graubunden, Switzerland - which has a floor area measuring 91.82 feet - was still officially the smallest pub in the world.

People in Shepreth converted their phone box as part of a campaign to keep village pub The Plough alive. They gave beer away, but accepted donations to a village fund and called time when a barrel of beer ran dry.

Villagers aim to stop The Plough, which closed after being turned into a restaurant, from being converted into a house.

They want planners at South Cambridgeshire District Council to rule that the building, a popular haunt with World War II pilots, must be used as a pub.

"We thought an alehouse in a phone box was a certainty to make the Guinness Book of Records," said Richard Handford, who is helping run the Save the Plough campaign.

"It's a bitter blow to discover that we won't be record breakers. Pity The Plough's not open - we could drown our sorrows."

- AAP