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
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.
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.
