If Essex is one of my favourite counties for GBG pubs, Oxon is well down the list. Nothing to do with Light Blue/Dark Blue rivalry, I just find the pubs too food-focused, outside a good cohort of boozers around Banbury.
20 years ago, the county was noted for some of the most unspoilt pubs in the country.
The Old Hooky in the Peyton Arms was still nectar on my last visit, but I see the North Star has dropped out of the Guide. Some basic Brakspear and Hook Norton houses have fallen to housing developers, killed by 2007 and all that.
The new Oxon entries in the Guide follow a pattern familiar to GBG-goers. On the southern edge of David Cameron’s former constituency, the Red Lion in Northmoor looks exactly like you know it will.
You actually have to go through a dose of gritty Witney on the way, passing the industrial estates of Eynsham, and gravel pits of Standlake. For reasons unfathomable, we brought our young sons here to see banger racing once; you could have sworn you were in the Fens.
It gets suddenly very posh as you enter Stanton Harcourt, a village keeping the thatching industry alive single handedly, and reach Northmoor via a row of magnificent weeping willows.
Here’s a photo of the regulars I found on the community website; it was obviously a karaoke event or something. CAMRA members dress better here than they do over the border in Reading Branch.
The village has obviously taken over their pub from that nasty Greene King, so the community pub can now offer such delights as Brakspear Original and Hobgoblin.
The Brakspear (£3.40), the only possible choice, was decent without being the thrilling pint it can still be round here (see: The Reformation, Gallowstree Common). Service from the usual cheery young uniformed staff was good, but you did feel like you were invading someone’s house party.
If there’s a checklist for the horrors of Ember Inns, then there’s surely one for the Home Counties pleasant dining pub. Perhaps Simon can add to this list;
- Children running about near open fires
- Huge dogs tripping you up on the way to the loos
- “Witty” 1980s carved signs for the loos
- Lengthy waits for service as staff fetch butter spoons and condiments
- Discussions about “huge jars of gherkins”
- “Balazu” olives advertised on a giant blackboard
- Locals sitting at the bar so you can’t see the beers (a particular community pub trait)
retiredmartin 
Can’t be Cameron-land, no tenderised pigs head on the menu.
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No politics on the blog please.
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Surely that’s social history rather than politics?
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Alleged social history.
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Quotes painted on the wall is one to add to Home Counties attributes and somewhere to tie up your Range Rover. Re-pubs list.. walked past the Duke of York at Elton today – still very unspoilt. It hardly ever opens it’s door tho’.
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You’re right about Duke, I’ve never found it open 😞
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It makes you wonder how some places get into the GBG.
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Martin you just don’t seem to be enjoying trawling around all these pubs. For reasons that are personal to you, you don’t feel comfortable in some parts of the country, particularly where people you think are wealthier than yourself live. Knock it on the head, then. Just go where you feel comfortable. Stop upsetting yourself.
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You make very sensible points Mrs Mayking, and I think you have sussed my inverse snobbery.
Sadly, the pubs are only stopping points for my exploration of this wonderful country, my love of which I hope comes through in the posts. So I won’t be stopping !
Best wishes
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Did you find any forgotten children abandoned in any of the pubs?
Of the regulars photographed, the one on the left, the one on the right and the two in the middle could do with a poke in the eye. Every other regular in that picture is safe.
The easy solution to children running around open fires is to put the children on the fire. If pub bog signs are clearly demarked for a particular gender, then they are clearly unisex. I spread my butter with a knife, indeed I don’t think I’ve ever come across anybody mentally stinted enough to use a spoon for their butter. I don’t order food unless I understand what it is. That is not to say that I am against trying something new. If something is in the way of your view of the bar, just knock it over.
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Tom. Tom. Tom. Tom. Stop. Some folk don’t realise this is a parody site.
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Aye, fair dos Mr Taylor. I often forget that some people may not appreciate such comments. I’ll attempt to reign myself in.
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I have often wondered about that, but finally worked it out when I saw “bashed peas” on the menu board.
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You couldn’t make that up though, could you, never mind “tartare” sauce.
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