“Awwwlrigh’ maaate… D… Doo… D-d-d-dooooo. Do yous ‘appen to know? Where the toils…tos… toilets are?” a man stood in the porch of the Lord Burghley asked one evening.

“It doesn’t matter, pal…,” I began to respond, “…because you’re already pissing up the coat rack.”

Also found within the Lord Burghley is the man  who seems to bark whenever his dog barks (he is always sat on his own), and the two old timers who lean against the same spot of the bar every Saturday night drinking from glasses they bring with them.

This is a totally normal pub. It does not have Jane Fonda inspired Vietnamese salads, bacon vodka or its own on-site micro-brewery. Nor does it have any history (that I know of –haven’t bothered to research it), it’s not owned by anyone famous and it shows sport on big screen TVs 28 hours a day 15 days a week.

They have loads of supermarket lagers on tap, John Smith’s and Doom Bar as ales, and absolutely standard pub snack fare.

It’s got an outdoor area that usually feels warmer than inside. It’s got a couple of big rooms that I’ve never seen anyone sit in and nobody – including the staff and obviously the aforementioned squiffer – seems to know where the gents are.

There is no quizzer, pool table, darts bit, board games, giant jenga or quiz night. There might be a fruit machine but I’ve never seen it turned on.

As a result of the building being listed (I’m going to assume there are subsequent restrictions in altering external appearance – again, no research necessary) you could quite easily walk past this pub and never know it existed. Given that someone has deemed it appropriate to call their central Stamford house ‘The Wizard’s Sleeve’ (not a joke), you could easily imagine someone else thinking it would be appropriate to call their house ‘The Lord Burghley’, and you would walk past thinking it was a house.

Frankly, this pub offers nothing out of the ordinary. But I think that’s what makes it a really good pub.

It’s absolutely normal. And sometimes doesn’t everyone just want a normal pint?

And if that’s no good – how many other pubs do you know where you can have a slash on the door on your way in??