What started as a practical joke by pub regulars has turned into a scene of which Salvador Dali would have been proud.

Adorning the walls of the Coach and Horses pub in Carshalton are dozens of clocks of every description like a scene from one of the Spanish surrealist’s paintings.

The clock invasion started when pub pranksters protested over landlord Stuart Ure’s decision to block the original 20-year-old pub clock with a Christmas tree.

Since then, drinkers have started putting clocks all over the pub in revenge.

Mr Ure said: “I took over the pub just before Christmas last year and it’s just a small pub, so there was no place to put a tree. I decided to substitute the clock with the tree and one day a clock appeared there. There are about 108 clocks there now.”

An auction of the clocks is now planned for the pub’s charity of choice, the Royal National Lifeboat Institute.

Mr Ure said: “We are hoping to raise money for the RNLI by auctioning the clocks and we would love for as many people as we can get to get involved with it and help.”

Another pub attraction was the gnome Mr Ure had placed in the pub garden, which was given to him by his stepdaughter, Claire, 20.

He said: “The gnome started to appear and disappear. It was travelling everywhere, even on the roof. Every day it was in a different place. Unfortunately it broke, so we did a graveyard and everything, and since then we’ve been invaded by gnomes and dwarves. They’re everywhere.”

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