The Dolphin Pub
Created | Updated Feb 16, 2002
The Dolphin Pub lies on the Banbury Road in the in-bred village of Middleton Cheney (cheeneee - not chayney like the yuppie gits who bought up all the nice cottages say) at the southern border of the county of Northhamptonshire.
A relatively large village of around 2500 souls, Middleton Cheney is famous for just about nothing, but one of the villages nearby - Sulgrave - is the ancestral family home of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin's parents came from Banbury.
Well, almost nothing - it has an unrivalled collection of pre-raphaelite stained glass in the All Saints church.
It does have a local notoriety for incest, as do many of the villages in the area, but that isn't unusual for rural communities anywhere.
The village boasts three pubs, The Dolphin and two Red Lions. There is also a social club.
In the seventies and eighties all of the pubs had much in common with the pub from the begining of "An American Werewolf in London" where everything goes silent upon the arrival of strangers.
In The Dolphin this effect was exacerbated by the lay out of the back room. The back room had an enormous banked up log fire and an enormous table. Every evening the table would be lined with the not so respectful elders of the village. These were all men and some of them were hideously disfigured, either by agricultural accidents, congenital birth defects from being too closely related to their close relations, or from the terrible damage inflicted on their nervous systems from badly prepared local brews.
The placing at the table adhered to a strict heirarchy, the oldest being closest to the fire and the youngest closest to the door; the men who had to collect the drinks and keep the door shut and suffer the draught.
When a senior would die everybody would shuffle up one place and room would be made for a new member of the codgers' club.
Considering the amount of time spent in the room, it would have been difficult for the codgers to partake in any other activity, such as the arrangement of a funeral, and it would be easy to infer that, in the event of a death, they simply shoved the corpse onto the fire, excellent alcohol soaked fuel.
A relatively large village of around 2500 souls, Middleton Cheney is famous for just about nothing, but one of the villages nearby - Sulgrave - is the ancestral family home of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin's parents came from Banbury.
Well, almost nothing - it has an unrivalled collection of pre-raphaelite stained glass in the All Saints church.
It does have a local notoriety for incest, as do many of the villages in the area, but that isn't unusual for rural communities anywhere.
The village boasts three pubs, The Dolphin and two Red Lions. There is also a social club.
In the seventies and eighties all of the pubs had much in common with the pub from the begining of "An American Werewolf in London" where everything goes silent upon the arrival of strangers.
In The Dolphin this effect was exacerbated by the lay out of the back room. The back room had an enormous banked up log fire and an enormous table. Every evening the table would be lined with the not so respectful elders of the village. These were all men and some of them were hideously disfigured, either by agricultural accidents, congenital birth defects from being too closely related to their close relations, or from the terrible damage inflicted on their nervous systems from badly prepared local brews.
The placing at the table adhered to a strict heirarchy, the oldest being closest to the fire and the youngest closest to the door; the men who had to collect the drinks and keep the door shut and suffer the draught.
When a senior would die everybody would shuffle up one place and room would be made for a new member of the codgers' club.
Considering the amount of time spent in the room, it would have been difficult for the codgers to partake in any other activity, such as the arrangement of a funeral, and it would be easy to infer that, in the event of a death, they simply shoved the corpse onto the fire, excellent alcohol soaked fuel.
