The weather felt like the end of the earth.  With the howling wind and lashing rain, it would have been easy to believe that Professor Gilbert Horner had just opened the ancient barrow called the Devil’s Hump and unleashed unholy forces upon the world.  Except that was fiction, and the rain was definitely very real.

I was achieving something of a boyhood ambition: visiting the picturesque, little village of Aldbourne, which was the filming location for the 1971 Doctor Who series, Doctor Who and the Daemons. On screen, Aldbourne was retitled Devil’s End, and the pub that featured in the show as The Cloven Hoof is in reality The Blue Boar.

I would have liked to explore the village a little better––visit the church and see where white witch Miss Hawthorne was imprisoned in a carved-oak chest; the Bronze Age barrow, which stood in for the Devil’s Hump; the village green where Jon Pertwee, playing the Third Doctor, was set upon by evil Morris dancers––but the weather is acting like a magnet, drawing me irrevocably towards The Blue Boar: shelter, food, and a pint of local Wadworth 6X.

The old pub sign for The Cloven Hoof is still in the forecourt of the pub.  Inside, the décor is not much how I remember it from the days when Jo Grant, Sergeant Benton and Mike Yates were holed up inside, and the duplicitous Bert Walker was its landlord.  Instead, it is warm and welcoming, and the prospect of scampi and chips only adds to its appeal.

If the interior of the pub itself does not immediately have me reminiscing about childhood sci-fi memories, I have a very pleasant surprise on my way to the Gents’.

An entire wall of the corridor on the way to the Gents’ toilet is filled with Doctor Who memorabilia: framed photographs of the actual filming; a Tardis painted over the door to the kitchen; a painting of Doctor Who’s car Bessie across the wall; a blue plaque, commemorating the filming, hung high on the wall; and even a statuette to a would-be Bok on a small shelf.  It is good to see that an event, which took place over fifty years ago now, is still so fondly recalled.

I admit my Doctor Who credentials to the bar-tender as I prepare to leave.

“Have you been to the Gents’?” he asks, before realising that it is a question open to misinterpretation.

I reassure him that I understand his meaning, buy a commemorative postcard to mark my visit, and head back out into the apocalyptic rain.

© Bradley Dunbar

Bradley Dunbar traces his lifelong suspicion of Morris dancing to watching Doctor Who and the Daemons at a formative age.

Bradley Dunbar’s latest book Surviving Herne Bay: With a Few Life Lessons from Doctor Who is due out from Mudskipper Press in 2024.