The Elm Tree Inn played host to Sir Barnes Wallis – and also Churchill (Image: Max Willcock/BNPS)
The Elm Tree Inn, in Langton Herring, Dorset, closed late last year after 400 years of trading.
Sir Barnes drank and lived in the pub while he was testing his famous device.
He spent time on the south coast as he experimented with his ingenious bomb ahead of the Dambusters raid of 1943.
The bouncing bomb tests paved the way for Operation Chastise, the attack on three dams in Germany’s Ruhr Valley.
The engineer used the five-mile long seawater lagoon called The Fleet, that sits behind Chesil Beach, to conduct his top secret tests.
A modified Wellington bomber repeatedly flew in low before releasing the bomb which skipped across the surface.
The experiments were so secret that even the men at a nearby naval gun emplacement were not aware of it and started shooting at the aircraft fearing it was an enemy attack.
English aeronautical engineer and inventor Barnes Wallis (Image: John Hedgecoe/Popperfoto via Getty Images)
During the testing Sir Barnes lodged at the 17th-century inn. It is also said Winston Churchill visited the hostelry during a secret visit to The Fleet at the time.
There is a small plaque in the village, home to around 700 people, saying “We shall never surrender” in reference to Churchill and a horse chestnut tree planted in his honour in
the churchyard. In the Cold War the pub was also rumoured to have been a secret rendezvous point for Russian spies.
Harry Houghton and girlfriend Ethel Gee worked for the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment on nearby Portland and would wait for calls from their KGB controller at the pub.
In more recent years the Elm Tree Inn was turned into a high-end gastro pub and achieved the prestigious AA two rosettes.
But last November its owners, the Electric Pub Company, announced it was closing due to the “challenging operating environment” and “declining trade and profitability”.
Campaigners at the Elm Tree Inn (Image: Max Willcock/BNPS)
Now the villagers are hoping to summon the wartime community spirit in the hope the pub will bounce back.
They are launching a campaign to raise the £700,000 required to buy it and reopen it as a community pub.
Anne Kerins, 68, has lived in the village for 25 years and is one of the fund-raisers, pictured left.
She said: “We have just submitted an application to have the pub listed as an Asset of Community Value, a key part of the process.
“Securing that will demonstrate the value of the pub to the village and hopefully attract people to visit.
“The residents are really struggling without it as everywhere else you have to drive to and there is no bus service.”
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