CLASSIC, BASIC, UNSPOILT PUBS – THE PEYTON ARMS, STOKE LYNE, OXON

May 2024. Stoke Lyne. Oxfordshire.

A slightly risky clamber over barbed wire, Great Escape style, from the M40 service station at Cherwell into a spooky (and chilly) Stoke Wood, and then to one of the UK’s last surviving Classic, Basic, Unspoilt pubs.

This paper version of the list is even older than some of the pubs on it.

OK, that list is just RW Coe‘s personal opinion but this blog is just Retired Martin’s opinion and as you know that is accepted as the Official Version Of The State Of Beer Quality, and that’s before we start on Wilburton. (Don’t start me on Wilburton).

Quite a few on that 25 year old leaflet have since closed or, worse, modernised (!!!), but there sure ain’t any pubs coming along to take their place (unless they’re in Cologne).

I was keen to visit the Peyton Arms a third, possibly final time, before the opening hours dwindle to naught.

One visit 25 years ago,

a second a decade back when I sat outside with the locals nursing a half of Hooky that seemed the best beer in the world at that moment.

Have I mentioned how cold it was in May ? No life outside, but that golden glow inside draws you in to th passageway splayed with pages of the Daily Mail, lots of rooms marked “Private”,

and a single room to the left with cobwebs, Dylan photo and four locals discussing, well, bitter lemons.

There’s a soundtrack of ’60s classic pop,

disappointingly from a CD player rather than a tape player or gramophone, and self-styled Mick the Hat fetches two pints of Hooky from the barrels.

“That’s a tenner. Five pounds each” says Mick, lest I think he charges more for Mrs RM’s jug than my straight. For a moment I almost think “A fiver ! That’s steep” before remembering I’m not in Sheffield, though my Bass in Fagan’s will cost me more than that.

I’d told Mrs RM the beer would be good and it was better. You’ll never get cooler, richer, more evocative beer, especially at 3.4 % (Mick is convinced it’s 3.6, I don’t argue). It’s NBSS 5, pure and simple.

But it’s the conversation about bitter lemons, and the cobwebs, and the music that draws Mrs RM in to its spell.

“All the Monkees songs can be sung to that tune“, she says. Oddly enough, and Mrs RM was thrilled with my agreement, I’d been thinking the exact same thing watching The Chase with Mum when confusing “Daydream Believer” with “I’m A Believer“.

Mum wouldn’t have been thrilled with the cobwebs.

A lively, cheery, friendly bunch,

and Mick came over from behind the bar to chat with us about our visit, the Fens, his time with Beeching (!) and the reliance on visiting trade in a village of 418. I reckon we were the only ones who’d walked to the pub, which at least meant I could have a second pint (Old Hooky, also a 5). The Old Hooky at 4.6% was treated with the reverence normally reserved for a 13% Imperial Stout from a Liverpool microbrewery.

As we left a group of lads in their 20s came in to stand chatting at the bar, and it felt more village boozer than museum piece.

An absolutely essential visit, if only for the loos.

But get there quick.

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

21 thoughts on “CLASSIC, BASIC, UNSPOILT PUBS – THE PEYTON ARMS, STOKE LYNE, OXON”

      1. So glad you enjoyed your visit to the Peyton Arms, and to know that it is still going. Used to be my local. You won’t find a better pint of Hooky x

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  2. For some reason this reminds me of an excellent novel by Leslie Thomas called The Adventures of Goodnight & Loving where ” George Goodnight, a lawyer on the staff of a London newspaper, finds his marriage has gone sour, his family holiday is cancelled and his car, broken down on the motorway, has been stolen, he walks through a gate in a fence on a summer’s day in the middle of England. What he doesn’t know, as he takes his first light steps across the sunlit meadows near the tiny village of Somerbourne Magna, is that he is embarking on a course that will take him far away from the country, the surroundings and the way of life he has always known. He is embarking on a journey that will eventually take him to the other side of the world. “

    Are there any other pubs you can walk to from motorway service stations stations ?

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  4. The legend “Mick the Hat”, a proper gent, I have been to The Peyton Arms a couple of times, a long uphill walk from Bicester, but worth the trek, for the ambience of this place.

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  6. Your photo of the ‘regulars’ captured Bill Plumb – not drinking Hooky any longer because it upsets his system (after sixty years of legal beer-drinking). His grandfather was the smith in Fringford in ‘Lark Rise’ days. Books on Flora Thompson contain photographs of Fringford and the Whittons supplied by him.

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  7. After my wife died, I rented a cottage in Stoke Lyne for three years (2013-2016) so that, among other things, I could visit the pub when open. I first visited it in 1990. I wrote and had printed a short history of it and the village while I was in residence.

    (I, also, have all Rodney Wolfe Coe’s CBU’s and a letter from him. I visited nearly all of them)

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  9. Unfortunately it’s very unfriendly and we have not felt welcome since being interrogated. There have been reports of racism remarks too

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