LAST orders have been called by the landlady of the city’s oldest pub.

Andrea Limlei has been the licensee, cleaner and agony aunt to thousands of customers placing their orders across the wooden bar at the Cardinal’s Hat in Friar Street, Worcester, for a decade.

Now she is off to pastures new and the pub’s owners have revealed plans to sell for £450,000.

Andrea and her then husband Anton shot to fame nationally when they were adopted by the Metric Martyrs campaigners in their ultimately victorious battle against the authorities over the size of glasses their Austrian lager was served in.

Ten years after signing the lease, Mrs Limlei, aged 40, is making her last payments and “escaping to Suffolk”.

“It’s been good fun,” she said. “But it has been a struggle with rents and rates going up and takings going down.

"It’s time for some new adventures.”

She has no set plan what she will do next with her new partner, but said: “I may one day open an Austrian coffee bar – but with more sociable hours.”

Mrs Limlei said she would miss her metric supporters and customers – “from the students to the barristers” – and would always love the English.

“I have to thank my amazing customers,” she said.

“I think the English people have such generosity. When they see something is unfair, they immediately stick together which is amazing – we wouldn’t have had this in Austria. People came from London just to say they supported us.”

In 2002, trading standards officers told the pub it could not serve its imported lager in litre measures, saying beer could only be sold by the pint or half, and threatened Mrs Limlei with jail.

The case came to nothing however, after it emerged Government tax on beer was calculated in metric measures.

Last orders were called on Saturday.

Meanwhile, with the lease up in July, owners the Pinches brothers, who also run Bushwackers nightclub, have revealed they are putting the grade two-listed building on the market.

Darren Pinches said: “We’ll get a management company to keep it open, serving ales and continental beers.”