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.

News Shopper:

Mr Hurley in his one room boozer.

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."

News Shopper:

The Door Hinge replaced an electrical shop in Welling High Street.

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."

Visit facebook.com/thedoorhinge and micropubassociation.co.uk