Brickendon Farmer's Boy Guinness explodes on the bar – landlady blames a Victorian ghost
CCTV at the Farmer's Boy in Brickendon, Hertfordshire, caught an unattended pint of Guinness shattering on its own. Landlady Rachel Drury reckons a friendly 19th-century ghost landlady did it.
In Brickendon, Hertfordshire, a half-drunk pint of Guinness did not wait for its owner to come back from the loo.
CCTV at the Farmer’s Boy shows the glass sitting alone on the bar – then suddenly shattering, sending stout and shards across the wood. Nobody was near it. Landlady Rachel Drury, 52, who has run the pub for about two and a half years, shared the July clip online; it has racked up more than 200,000 views. Sceptics muttered about thermal shock – a cold drink in a hot glass. Drury is having none of it: the regular always drinks Guinness and would have refused a warm pint, and if the glass had been stressed it should have gone earlier, not while it was simply sitting there.
Her preferred explanation is a former landlady from the 19th century. Psychics who have visited, she says, talk about a friendly woman and child. Staff closing up alone swear they have seen a woman standing there. Customers report brushes past their legs. One night, stressed in bed, Drury felt someone patting her back – and nobody was there. “I’m not scared,” she said. “Whoever it is that is here just wants to be nice.”
Real photo: the Farmer’s Boy bar, Brickendon (7 May 2026) – not from the night the glass shattered. Photo: Acabashi / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).
Stock photo: a pint of Guinness in Temple Bar, Dublin (17 Jun 2018) – not the exploded Brickendon pint. Photo: Stinglehammer / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).
AI illustration – imagined friendly haunt. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)
AI illustration – imagined punchline; not a real photograph of anyone at the Farmer’s Boy.
Online comments split the usual way: “Must be an Irish ghost,” “you’re in his seat,” “get the vicar in – can’t be having pints wasted,” versus the temperature-and-cracks brigade. Either way, one regular’s Guinness did not survive the trip to the toilets.
Reported by Wales Online (Demi Koutouzi and Howard Lloyd, 6 Nov 2026) and the Daily Star.
