Steve Thompson looks at the pubs of yesteryear around the Plain
This part of East Oxford once had about 40 pubs. It acquired its name when St Clement’s Church was removed in 1828, leaving a large open space that is now the Plain roundabout. Branching out from the roundabout are four major arteries: Magdalen Bridge and Oxford High Street; St Clement’s Street, leading to Headington; Cowley Road; and Iffley Road.
Like Jericho, the small area around the Plain east to, say, James Street and Princes Street has the air of a self-contained village. Yet according to the Drink Map of Oxford, in 1883 it had no fewer than 40 pubs! Today, there are seven (nine if you include the Big Society and Mad Hatter cocktail bars). In this piece, we celebrate the seven survivors, plus four that are no longer with us – the Coach & Horses and the Duke of Edinburgh in St Clement’s Street, the Prince of Wales in Cowley Road and the Temple Bar in Temple Street. We have images of all four thanks to a remarkable collection of Oxford pub photographs owned by Michael Crook and taken in the 1950s or earlier.
Dennis Brown, who has been an Oxford CAMRA member since the early 1980s, shared his memories with me recently in the Royal Blenheim in St Ebbe’s Street – another survivor! The Coach & Horses in St Clement’s Street was formerly a stable opened in 1774 for use on the Oxford to London stage route. The old coaching yard can still be seen through a covered archway to the side of the pub. Closed in 1999, the name lives on as the Oxford Coach & Horses family-run guest house.
Dennis recalls: “That’s the Coach & Horses, almost opposite the Port Mahon. It was a Morrells house. I’ve got a feeling that in the early 1980s, it might have got as far as the Good Beer Guide. It wasn’t one of my regulars, more a watering hole. It was a pretty standard Morrells boozer until Morrells were bought out and it went on to Greene King. It’s now a bed and breakfast. Now it’s painted bright blue.”
Further along St Clement’s Street was the splendidly titled Duke of Edinburgh, named after not the late Prince Philip but Alfred, second son of Queen Victoria. This tiny pub was noted for its pool table “squeezed into a nook which necessitates comically short cues for certain shots”. An Ind Coope house serving Double Diamond and no cask ale, it was not one of Dennis’s favourites! It closed in 2014 and is now the Coconut Tree restaurant serving Sri Lankan street food.
Little is known about the Prince of Wales in Cowley Road, but in his Encyclopaedia of Oxford Pubs, Inns and Taverns Derek Honey teases with this nugget: “With only a £2 rent the landlord during the early 1890s must have thought he was sitting on a gold mine, his turnover going from £692 in 1889, to a high of £848 by 1893.” It was still open in the 1980s but later closed and is now a Nando’s restaurant.
The Temple Bar in Temple Street was named after the principal ceremonial entrance to the City of London from the City of Westminster from 1672 to 1878, while Temple Street itself takes its name from the medieval Temple Mill once situated just south of Magdalen Bridge. It closed in 2010 and is now Mint Kitchen & Lounge, a Lebanese restaurant.
Dennis recalls: “The Temple Bar was Ind Coope. In the 1980s, when the Beer Orders came in, certain of the national brewers with large holdings in one particular city were forced to go in for pub ‘swaps’ and the Temple Bar was one of these, swapped with Wadworth.
“Just before Wadworth took it on, it never did much in the way of trade. A chap I knew at the time told the story that just before the swap, the landlord said to him, ‘I’m being swapped with Wadworth. What should I do?’ The chap replied, ‘Get more staff!’ ‘You sure?’ ‘Trust me.’ The chap was in just after the swap and the landlord said, ‘Thanks for the tip!’ That was the first Wadworth pub within the city boundaries.”
Although renamed the Mad Hatter in 2013, the pub-turned-cocktail-bar in Iffley Road still retains much of its look as the Cricketer’s Arms, including the sign above the main entrance and a sculpture on the corner of the building. The sculpture is of Donald Bradman, considered by many to be the greatest batsman of all time, and commemorates the match he played for Australia in 1948 against the University of Oxford at the Christ Church cricket ground opposite the pub.
Dennis remembers hearing that Morland Brewery of Abingdon demolished the pub and rebuilt it in 1936. “To keep the licence, you still had to serve beer so the landlady at the time lived in a tent on site. In the 1980s, her daughter and son-in-law were running it, Ray and Daphne. Daphne was the ‘queen of the bar’, you know, that was her domain. And Ray’s domain was the cellar, and God help him if he was in the bar when it was open!
“The Cricketer’s was very much a taxi driver’s pub as well. Because I mentioned Ray and Daphne, her father was a cabbie and that was where the cabbies used to gather. Drink driving wasn’t in by then but even so you still had to be careful. The Cricketer’s was in the Good Beer Guide for years, and did all three Morland beers, Mild, Bitter and Best. (Former Oxford CAMRA chairman) Tony Goulding was a big fan, I think. Ray and Daphne retired in the 1980s or early 1990s.”
The Elm Tree in Cowley Road was built in 1899 to a design by Henry T. Hare, an architect also responsible for the Town Hall and the Slow & Steady pub (formerly the White House) in Oxford. The building is noted for its long chimney stacks and its pillared rounded porch entrance. The pub was so named for the elm trees that lined the main Oxford to Cowley road when it was no more than a dirt track. It was renamed Big Society in 2013 and is now a popular burger and cocktail bar. Dennis remembers seeing a table tennis table in the Elm Tree, the only one either of us had seen in any pub anywhere!
Despite the losses and changes, there are still some fine real ale pubs around the Plain. Dennis remembers the Half Moon: “It was an Ind Coope house, one of the smallest, if not the smallest, pubs in the city. It was originally one unit but now it’s two. If you look at it from the front, the right-hand room was a trade union office. It added a good 50% to the size of the pub. I’m afraid they missed a trick there. I think they should have changed the name of the pub to the Three Quarters Moon!
“The pub was known for live Irish music. Joe Ryan was the landlord and very much of the same ethnic origin as most of the customers. He’s still around apparently but retired now. You had long benches along the wall, made of planks resting on beer barrels.” Also see “Signs of the Times”.
Finally, Dennis recalls the Port Mahon: “It’s the next one as you go up, on two levels, with the Jeune Street bar on the lower level. To enter, you go up some steps and then down again, and the reason for that is the area is prone to flooding. It was Morrells and is now Greene King, and it’s under new management. It used to be a bit of a music venue but no longer.”
Of the remaining pubs on the 1883 Drink Map of Oxford, the Burton Ale Stores in St Clement’s Street is now the Oranges & Lemons, the Red White & Blue in James Street is now the James Street Tavern, the Star Inn in Pembroke Street is now the Star in Rectory Road, and the Swan Inn in Marston Street is now the Oxford Blue. Facing the Plain, only the Cape of Good Hope, like the cape from which it takes its name, remains unchanged despite brief changes of name in the recent past.