News Beat
The Doffcocker Inn history revisited as revamp complete
The pub has intrigued its punters for more than a century with its curious design philosophy based on the numbers that mark the passage of our lives.
Its windows contain 365 panes of glass — one for each day of the year — and inside the rooms are divided by 52 doors — one for each week.
Counting the cellar as one, the building has four floors — one for each season, or perhaps to represent the number of weeks in a month.
It does not stop there. The pub also has 28 rooms for each day in a four-week month, 12 rooms in the cellar for each month of the year and seven bedrooms for each day of the week.
Recently the pub has been spruced up this month, carrying on the legacy and history as a local landmark.
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Windows, paint, function rooms, decorations and the bar area are part of the pub’s refurb giving it a fresh look without sacrificing the atmosphere people know and love.
Gee Bradshaw, the designated premises supervisor, said: “The customers love it, I don’t think we’ve had one bad review about the refurb.”
With many regulars and a busy evening-time atmosphere, both Gee and John Bradshaw love the community aspect, even seeing people grow up as they come in through the years.
In 2005, they used to run the pub, left in 2011 and then came back in 2023.
Community spirit is at the heart of the Doffcocker Inn, and with new refurbishments means the clubs and groups that meet inside have a better experience.
John said: “It’s not our pub, it’s the their pub due to how much they love it.
Tom Briggs has been coming to the pub for 20 years for a Friday pint.
He said: “There’s a big table we’ve got pushed together, it’s not to make it look good here- it’s the same group who sit around there all the time.”
Mr Bradshaw added: “Originally the Doffcocker that was here was a lot smaller than this, and in them days you can build a new pub, but you can’t close the old one, so they had to build this one on top of the old one.”
The Doffcocker Inn was rebuilt in 1901 on the site of an older pub of the same name.
Even the rebuilding process itself was unusual, as workers built the new structure around its predecessor before demolishing the old interior.
