The lost pubs of Jericho

When I moved to Oxford in 1980, I lived in Leckford Road in the north of the city where I drifted off to sleep at night thinking there were about 20 pubs within a 10-minute walk. Many of these were in Jericho, that grid of tight-packed streets of terraced houses between Walton Street and the canal. But some had already closed, as Jericho had started its transition from a working class district to a gentrified suburb where two-bedroom terraced houses now cost nearly £1 million.

Only three pubs remain in Jericho itself, plus another three along Walton Street. But the area is still a “destination” for real ale drinkers, especially if you include the Gardeners Arms in Plantation Road, plus the Rose & Crown in North Parade Avenue, just the other side of Woodstock Road.

Back in the 19th century, there were around 20 pubs in Jericho alone according to the Drink Map of Oxford 1883, published by temperance campaigners and available from the Bodleian Library shop. Many of these had gone by the time I arrived, but in 1980 there were still lots of them by late 20th century standards.

The Crown in Canal Street. All images by M.J. Crook

One I remember particularly but couldn’t recall its name was close to St Barnabas Church, with many posters of rock stars and a whiff of marijuana in the air. How interesting then that all these years later I would get to know the man who put the posters up and organised the jukebox in this and other pubs, who told me that this pub was the Crown in Canal Street.

Mick “The Hat” Weston, who worked in many Jericho pubs from the late 1960s until the 1980s when he moved away, said: “We had wonderful landlords in Jericho as most of them were local, and most of the customers were local too as they worked at Lucy’s ironworks or Oxford University Press.

“Tony and Wendy Matthews had the Crown in the 1960s and then Bernie and Vera Evans. One day Bernie said to me, ‘Mick, I’m off to Cheltenham races, can you paint the bar while I’m out? Any colour you like.’ When he came into the lounge that night he asked me how it had gone in the bar, and when I took him in there he asked me to turn on the lights. But the lights were on, and I’d painted the walls matt black. ‘But in two days’ time,’ I said, ‘I’ll put up lovely big pictures of Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen and The Byrds, and put their music on the jukebox.’”

The tiny Fountain was demolished to make way for a new primary school

That proved to be a success, and Mick was soon in demand at other pubs. Another long-closed pub, the Fountain on Cardigan Street where a school now occupies the site, had a majority Irish clientele so he ensured it had the best Irish music in town. At that time Jericho had many small shops, all now gone, including a butchers run by Arthur Custance. He would ask customers to come into the Fountain where he was sitting, pay for their meat and pick it up from the unattended shop!

Past characters loom large in Mick’s recollections, including a fiddle player called Hughie McCann who cycled from Cowley every Sunday to play at the Radcliffe Arms, which survives today as the Rickety Press. The Old Bookbinders, which has also survived, was at one time run by an Asian landlord who specialised in duck curry. The third survivor, the Harcourt Arms, was run by Vic and Amy Armstrong and then “John the Dog”, so-called because he had come from the Squire Bassett pub in Kidlington, now a Nepalese restaurant.

Mick also recalls Pete Winters at the Carpenter’s Arms in Nelson Street, “who did sausage, egg and chips all day for almost nothing”, and later Ken Siret. “Official opening time was 10am but he would open at 9.59, when half of Ruskin College was already in there,” he added.

The Carpenters Arms, yet another Morrells pub

The Baker’s Arms in Albert Street, run by Geoff Payne, was very big on Shove Ha’penny, a table-top game with players using a large coin to strike a smaller coin, along with Aunt Sally and darts. The Globe at 59 Cranham Street, now private property but still looking very much like a pub, was run by Ken Freeman: “His beer had to be perfect, and he served the best pint of Morrells Varsity Ale in Oxford.”

Other names of pubs, their landlords and customers drifted in and out of our conversation, including the tiny Walton Ale Stores, the Prince of Wales, New Inn and the evocatively named Cottage of Content. The Prince of Wales, now much expanded and called Jude the Obscure, is particularly remembered by long-standing Oxford CAMRA member Graham Baker, who used to work as a lab technician at the Radcliffe Infirmary on Woodstock Road.

“There was a passageway leading from the back of the Infirmary onto Walton Street, and the Prince of Wales was the nearest pub,” recalled Graham. “We had a generous lunch hour, when the bosses would go to the lounge and the lower castes to the public bar where we tried to keep out of sight. We also went to the Royal Oak on Woodstock Road (also still open) which was full of doctors and nurses.

“Another one we used to use was the Radcliffe Arms, which had just a single bar in the 1970s. That era was the start of holidays abroad and it was full of little straw donkeys and postcards from Spain. It had old Northampton Brewing Company etched windows, but they were lost. An old girl there knew exactly when the fruit machine would pay out.

The Radcliffe Arms — one of the few to survive, as the Rickety Press

“The Harcourt is definitely the least changed of the Jericho pubs that are still open, and a real step back in time. After three pints of Fuller’s ESB at lunchtime you’d need a nap in the afternoon.

“Some pubs in Jericho were well-known as drug dens, and raids were a regular occurrence when people would throw everything on the floor,” added Graham. “But the police did tolerate it as they knew where everyone was, and could keep an eye on them. There were a lot of undercover cops around – you could tell them by their clean jeans.”

He added: “Jericho was a tough area, also known as a Red Light District, but it was also cosmopolitan and Bohemian. It was full of very interesting characters, and didn’t have the antagonism of Town versus Gown that you had in city centre pubs in the 1970s.”

Another person with long memories of the area is former nurse Steph Presdee, who went on to work at city pubs including the cellar bar at the Mitre.

“I lived in 19, Cranham Terrace, and 3, St Barnabas  Street, after leaving Arthur Sanctuary House, the trainee nurses’ home in Headington, in 1970,” she said. “My mother who also was a nurse at the old Radcliffe Infirmary many years before was horrified as she said it was a red light area, but I assured her it was a student area, my local haunt being the Crown pub.

The Prince of Wales on Walton Street was greatly extended and later renamed Jude the Obscure, and survives today

“Of course we all visited the other pubs too. Being nurses we worked hard but played hard too! The Fountain was known as the smallest pub as it was like one room. The Crown had a snug to the right, the bar was double-sided and we would be in the noisy jukebox side and yes, the smell you mentioned was definitely in the air!”

For my part I still enjoy visiting the last three pubs in Jericho, the Phoenix cinema and the pubs and restaurants along Walton Street. On dark and misty nights, perhaps, the ghosts of old characters still walk these streets, while a whiff of weed and the beat of classic rock comes from buildings now converted into housing. It’s nice to remember.