One of the area's most iconic village pubs is about to undergo a £550,000 upgrade - but customers have plenty of time to celebrate Christmas and New Year with licensees Chrys and Hanna Fisher before work starts.

The Pineapple pub in Lake End Road, Dorney will close on January 2, ready for work to start four days later. It will reopen in early spring.

For Chrys and Hanna, who also run the the Palmer Arms pub in Dorney, refurbishment can not come soon enough. They have spent the last two years working with Heineken owned Star Pubs & Bars and in dialogue with South Bucks District Council to get an application approved that would be sympathetic to the pub’s listed status.

Chrys said: “The Pineapple has a really nice energy to it which we were keen to retain. But it has a tiny kitchen, not much trading space and the décor is in a poor state of repair. Unfortunately, in its current state it isn’t viable in the long term. So we’re thrilled it’s to be given a new lease of life, as it is a lovely village pub.

“We hadn’t intended to take on a second pub, but the village wasn’t the same when The Pineapple closed at the end of 2016. It felt sad. Not anymore. Although we’re modernising it, The Pineapple is going to continue to be very pub like. We’re keeping the décor sympathetic to the age of the building and extending the pub to create more space inside and make it more comfortable for customers.”

Funds are being spent on a building a contemporary larch clad garden room extension with bi-fold doors and limestone flooring leading onto a flagstone terrace doubling the pub’s internal seating capacity.

Chrys and Hanna moved to the village 11 years ago. Previously Chrys worked at Browns restaurant in London. The Palmer Arms was the first pub of their own. They have four children, aged 11 to 22 and as if that and running two pubs isn’t enough, Chrys is also a hypnotherapist and EFT practitioner.