I am still in the pub - but a different pub in a different place at a different time. I was scanning some old negatives today - as one does on a cold rainy day - and I came across this strip of five monochrome negatives I must have shot in the mid 1970s (1975 is my best guess). Our friend Jane had just moved to Eynsham in Oxfordshire and we were visiting for the weekend and the first thing to do on visiting a new village is to walk around taking pictures of all the pubs (40 years and I have not changed at all). I suspect that there is a companion strip of negatives to this somewhere as there were more than five pubs in the village - but the five represented here provide a good overview of what has happened to village pubs over the last forty years.
As far as I can discover, the Jolly Sportsman and the Swan are still going strong - providing real ale and decent food for villagers and visitors alike. The Evenlode is still open but now it is a restaurant and carvery that mainly caters for the passing trade. The Railway Inn closed shortly after this photograph was taken - the victim of a bad fire caused by a hay wagon that caught fire. The Star is also gone, converted into a housing redevelopment six years ago.
So the score so far is two all (we will ignore the Evenlode for the moment - to the half serious drinker, restaurants don't count) as far as open and closed is concerned. We will call in a half-time score in case I find the second negative strip which records the other pubs of the village.
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ReplyDeleteComplete iPad fail On my way! previous comment. Sorry Alan.
ReplyDeleteMy mother and I visited Jane and Barbara in the hot summer of 1975. My mother's parents were BFFs with Jane's parents. There was an exciting incident with a not actually hard boiled egg.
Totally failing to control the iPad's weirdness this evening.
We moved to Eynsham in January 1975. I think there were 12 pubs then. Do you remember us making you a board game in which you had to visit them all and collect 'pints'? As far as I know the Newlands Inn is still there, next to our old cottage, but the White Hart further down the road, the old smithy, has gone.
ReplyDeleteAh ha - I follow your blog for the Yorkshire connection (having met Jane at mutual friends one Christmas and talked electrified narrowboats) but we live in Eynsham now - equidistant from the Swan, the Jolly Sportsman and the Red Lion - and the White Hart is fine under new management; no food as yet though.
ReplyDeleteAh ha - I follow your blog for the Yorkshire connection (having met Jane at mutual friends one Christmas and talked electrified narrowboats) but we live in Eynsham now - equidistant from the Swan, the Jolly Sportsman and the Red Lion - and the White Hart is fine under new management; no food as yet though.
ReplyDelete