With its new owners preparing to call time on Hook’s landmark pub the final pints are being poured at the Cap In Hand.

The historic memorabilia which fill the 200-year-old building's walls are due to return to head office soon, confirming an imminent closure.

These links to the past line the walls of the pub as gentle conversation fills the old building on a grey murky day.

Not many are in the sprawling watering hole on a Tuesday December afternoon when I visit. The few people who are taking shelter from the rain are warm and friendly, but would rather their pint for company than a chatty reporter.

The pub feels comfortingly old, and if you cannot sense it has contained many years of merry-makers, it tells you so on every inch of spare wall.

Photographs mark the evolution of the pub, from the building’s creation in the early 1800s, to when it housed the Southborough Arms from the 1930's, and eventually became the Cap in Hand.

Formerly part of the JD Wetherspoons chain this year it was sold on to Mendoza Limited.

Surrey Comet:

The interior of the pub

Initially due to close after the sale in September, the pub has remained open with a potent uncertainty about how long it will do so for.

Rumours say it will close for good in the new year, but even in December, staff working behind the bar had not been given a confirmed date.

Opening times for the Christmas period are on view in the pub but only go as far as January 1.

Mendoza Limited, a notoriously hard to pin down developer based in the Isle of Man, has bought out other pubs in London in recent years.

Golfrate Property Management, based in Wimbledon, were believed to be working with the developer on the future of the pub. When asked when the Cap in Hand will shut its doors, what will happen to the site and if it would return as a pub, there was “no information” to give on what will come.

Surrey Comet:

The Cap in Hand in December 2015

Harry Smith, 73, of Hook Road, who comes to the pub often for an afternoon pint and a plate of fish and chips, said: “I’ve been coming in here for years. It’s such a nice place and always has nice people in it.

“It’s such a shame the place will close. I’m not sure where I’ll go when it does close for my pints.

“I’ll miss coming here. I hope they don’t just turn it into flats with no soul. The building is too full of history for that, I think.”

The beginnings of the pub as a favourite for travellers came in 1927 when the Kingston bypass crossed Hook Road and a roundabout was built, later on becoming a favourite for bikers, who would congregate at the pub.

Notes from keen historians cite the Ace of Spades area, in which the imposing and well known pub sits, as the first place to have a landing strip for a public house.

Permission for the strip was granted by the Air Ministry in 1933 and linked to the Ace of Spades pub, which closed after a fire in the mid-1950s.

Surrey Comet:

A painting of the pub in the 80's 

The Cap in Hand site, just off the A3 Hook junction, boasts many anecdotes and links to well-known names on the wood clad walls.

Newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook visited the Ace of Spades repair shop in 1928 after his car crashed with a lorry at the roundabout, and former heavyweight boxing champion Max Baer set up a training camp at the Ace of Spaces before two fights at the Harringay Arena in 1937.

Thanks to a photograph and illustration of a large misshapen balloon, pub goers can learn Hook hosted a royal visit from King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1939 during World War II.

Surrey Comet:

Details about the barrage centre

They were looking at one of ten centres in London dedicated to creating barrage balloons – a defence system the size of a cricket pitch suspended in the air to catch out enemy bombers – in 45 acres of Hook’s Lovelace estate.

Another image, of the 1966 world cup winning England team, shows a resident of 32a Hook Road, George Cohen, who lived there when part of the historic win.

Surrey Comet:

George Cohen lived near to the pub

The Chessington District Residents’ Association is working to have the pub declared as an ‘asset of community value’, with documents hoping to achieve this submitted to the council.

But with the memorabilia set to go back to JD Wetherspoons head office in Watford, it is certain the pub as it is now is preparing for last orders.