THE estate agents acting for the Dolphin Inn in Waterloo Road, Wellington, say they have received an offer for the former pub which has been accepted.

The once-popular waterhole, which closed in 2020, has character period features throughout, including wooden and flagstone floors and exposed brickwork.

Publican Anna Madams ran the pub for eight years but said she struggled to make the business pay in the ‘face of a changing industry’, before shutting it down.

The last straw was the ‘arrival’ of the Wetherspoon in the centre of the town.

Mike Green, whose father Bernard ran the pub many years ago, says it would be a shame if the new owner decided not to reopen the Dolphin.

“Pubs are having a hard time of things these days, “ he told me. “It is a different world now. It wouldn’t surprise me if they turned the site into housing like they did with the Sportsman some years ago.

“The Dolphin has a big garden - there’s certainly enough room to build homes.”

There is no news yet as to what the new owner intends to do with the building, but the prospects of it remaining a pub are not good.

Pouring down...

NO-ONE expected it to rain so heavily last Sunday, causing flooding to areas which have never been hit before.

I decided to take a look at the River Tone in the afternoon but didn’t get far before coming across residents at the bottom of Seymour Street in Wellington frantically trying to unblock drains.

I took a couple of pictures and then noticed that the old people’s homes nearby were also suffering the same fate. I got some more pictures and decided there was no point in going down to the river.

I can’t remember a time when so many places were hit by flooding in the town, when normally they would never experience such a problem.

The WWN weather man Simon Ratsey told me that 1.6 inches of rain fell in two hours on Sunday afternoon - and in total four inches of rain fell during 35 hours over the weekend.

It’s the biggest deluge he has recorded since July 28-29, 1969. However, we had more rain in a shorter period of time than in 69.

We have to accept that these severe weather problems are due to climate change, what else? And would anyone like to have a word with China about this, and India and USA for that matter. They’re are the biggest polluters in the world and they will eventually have to do something about it.

But by then it may be too late...

Little hope.....

IT WAS not very long ago that I was writing about the price of petrol falling at filling stations - and that petrol was no dearer than it was ten years ago.

However, with the main oil producers cutting back on production, the price was always going to go up again.

This week the Longforth station in Wellington was selling petrol at £1.53.9 a litre, which is 14p up on what it was earlier this year.

Whatever anyone tells you, the price of petrol is not the biggest cause of inflation. There’s no doubt supermarkets have kept prices high to improve profit margins.

And until there is a price war between big stores over petrol prices, it will remain high.

Certainly, with the price of oil continuing to rise, there is little hope of any good news for motorists.

Police priorities....

THE Metropolitan Police have revealed that 1,000 of its officers are either suspended or on restricted duties. That’s more than two per cent of its entire workforce.

The force is already under strain to deal with crime, without its own officers breaking the law.