DOOR HINGE Pub of Welling

DOVER KENT ARCHIVES

Page Updated:- Sunday, 07 March, 2021.

PUB LIST

PUBLIC HOUSES

Paul Skelton

Earliest March 2013

Door Hinge

Open 2020+

11 Welling High Street

Welling

07956 845509

https://whatpub.com/door-hinge

Above photo, June 2013.

Situated in the High Street and converted from an old electrical shop, the "Door Hinge" was the fist micro-pub to open in what is today Greater London. It won CAMRA'S Bexly branch Pub of the year in 2014.

The name came from the licensees mother's maiden name. Evidentially Mrs. Hinge was landlord Ray Hurley's mother's maiden name, and till late in her life everyone thought she was called Jean, however her real name was Dooreen, and so at school she gained the nickname "Rusty, Squeaky or Door Inge." Hence the name of the pub in memory of his mother.

From the http://www.newsshopper.co.uk 17 June 2013.

New Welling watering hole The Door Hinge is London's first micropub

A CONVERTED electrical shop in Welling High Street is London's first contribution to a growing pub craze.

The "Door Hinge" is part of the micropub trend which began in Kent eight years ago and has now spread as far as county Durham and now into Bexley.

Since the "Butcher's Arms" first opened its doors in Herne in 2005, 19 other back-to-basics alehouses have sprung up with Ray Hurley, 55, the first landlord to bring the idea to the capital.

His new watering hole has just one room for punters, featuring tables and counters along the wood-panelled walls, and another for the beer which can been seen stored in cooled casks through a window by the main bar.

It's no frills, no music and definitely no mobile phones and like many other micropubs, is converted from a vacant shop which was an old fashioned chandler's selling seeds before it was empty for 18 months after the electrical store closed.

The retired black cab driver of 20 years told News Shopper: "When you come in here it's like I'm inviting you in my front room.

"You go into most pubs nowadays and you can't hear anything with the music and the fruit machines.

"Someone could be having a conversation about what they did last night or what they are going to get at Morrisons.

"What I love about it is you are forced to talk to someone.

"Everyone starts talking because they all have the same thing in common: they love ale."

Ray sells six different ales on constant rotation and calls the Door Hinge his "oasis" after he got tired of being a cabbie and decided to open it in March.

The boozer is named after his mum whose maiden name was Doreen Indge and who died two years to the day before he got the licence.

Ray said: "At school they shortened Doreen to Door and she was known as Door Hinge or Squeaky or Rusty Hinge.

"She would have loved the place. She was a typical old London girl from Deptford."

Now part of greater London Welling was once part of Kent and so is part of my list of Kentish pubs. However, I will be concentrating my research in what is deemed to be Kent today, but will add information regarding this pub as it is sent to me or found through my other research.

As the information is found or sent to me, including photographs, it will be shown here.

Thanks for your co-operation.

LICENSEE LIST

HURLEY John March/2013+

If anyone should have any further information, or indeed any pictures or photographs of the above licensed premises, please email:-

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