DOZENS of villagers sat out a power cut in the pub last Wednesday as the lights went out in East Meon.

Some 729 properties around the village, Ramsdean and Butser lost power around 6pm following a suspected lightning strike on an overhead line.

Most were reconnected within 90 minutes after power was re-routed but nine remained off-grid until 11.15pm.

While the outage was bad news for those residents, it was the opposite for the Isaak Walton with the prospect of a candlelit pint appealing to many locals.

A spokesperson from SSEN Distribution apologised for the interruption, which took place in testing conditions.

They said: “We would like to assure customers that our engineers did all they could to restore their power as safely and as quickly as possible.”