Building work is now well underway at our pub with some of the accompanying noise, mess and disruption however,Johnny is still fully open for business and the warm weather has finally decided to make an appearance.
These pictures are of what was once our cellar. Under the back wall the builders found an old well. Johnny was all up for tapping into it and using it to brew our own White House beer. However, the reality is it put work on hold for a while but things are now moving forward again. Following our well discovery the cellar floor was dug up revealing, yes another floor below. That was lifted by the digger and naturally we exposed a third floor. No wonder the roof in that old cellar was so low! The builders are now over a foot lower than they expected and the concrete requirement is doubling with every new level discovered.
Meanwhile, at the front you may have seen progress on the extension of our new cellar behind the temporary toilet. We hope this will be completed first and put straight into use. Storage is a huge issue for Johnny as you can see by the requirement for the temporary shed that has arrived at the car park and the need to use every nook, cranny and corner.
We appreciate the temporary toilets are not ideal however, many have said they are better than the old Gents! We are trying to keep the additional mess and noise down to a minimum. Work scheduled to be completed before opening hours has occasionally overrun. That has seen a live electric cable being cut during lunch service, the volunteers boring holes in the pub wall for 3 hours achieving break through as the first customers arrived, and our ancient plumbing system springing a leak under the bar requiring an emergency call out as the pipe in questioned threatened to turn into a showerhead at the slightest touch.
No doubt there will be more unexpected issues as we progress so we ask for your continued understanding but it will be worth the wait. We will put up a large copy of the building plans to show what awaits us all when this work is finally completed.
To steal the words of the man who had his drinking education in our pub, these works are not the beginning of the end. They are only the end of the beginning. The pub has never been tested to this degree before in terms of food and drink preparation, storage and consumption. For example, one area we will need to address is the electric supply. As the name suggests The White House was just a simple house and has the single phase electricity supply you would expect for a house. Any commercial operation needs a 3 phase supply to stop the constant tripping of the electrics. We are getting quotes for this work and will put a roadmap together of how we hope to progress with dragging our pub’s infrastructure into the 21st century over the coming years whilst keeping the originality and character of our historic pub.
Enjoy the weather and see you in our pub garden
