From ancient times Faringdon has been an important crossroads and a busy market town. By 1813 coaches to London from the West Country came through on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and by 1840 coaches were coming through twice a day. Horses needed to be changed, which explains the large number of mews and stabling around the town and the coaching inns for the travellers; Faringdon was a town known for its hospitality, ales and good food. Photo – c1910, outside The Old Crown Coaching Inn awaits the stagecoach from Swindon to Abingdon calling at Faringdon, Southmoor & Marcham. Fare £5 for outside, extra for inside.
Rosa May James has been quoted for writing the following for her son in 1896 to show how many pubs there were in Faringdon at that time. The work has also been published as having been written by Private G Taylor, who was living in Toowoomba, Australia in 1917. It seems likely that he was perhaps either an acquaintance of her son or the person to whom she wrote the original letter.
‘Driving into the town of Faringdon this morning I was delighted to find an old and valued friend The Duke of Wellington and having shaken hands with him by way of Salutation we proceeded down Glos’ter St escorted by the Volunteer and made the best of our way to Marlborough Arms. We had just seated ourselves for a drink when the Landlord informed us that the Angel had seen the Crown* knocked out of the Queens Arms by the Duke of York. Determined to see if such a thing was true we started away to Coxwell St where we met the Gardener with the Wheatsheaf* in his arms just preparing to feed the Swan*. He told us he had never heard of such a thing but since our arrival in town there has been a desperate fight between the Red Lion and the Eagle and that the eagle was at the top of the street and the lion was chasing the White Hart all round the Folly*. Off we set again and getting to the Market Place we were alarmed at the tolling of the Bell. Enquiring what was the matter we were told that the Tap had been stopped and the old Bull had kicked the Star over into the Bakers Arms.’
Most of the 20 pubs mentioned in the above quotation were still here in the 1960s & 70s and served a population of a little over 3000 – it had been around that figure as had the pubs for at least the past 150 years. With the decline of the livestock market and travellers no longer needing to pass through the town, Faringdon is no longer what it was. Escalated by the more recent changes in social and shopping habits, only 4 of these pubs (marked with *) now remain open in 2024, even though more than three times the number of people are now living here. Records have also been found that show a number of even older ‘Long-Lost Pubs’, most of which have so far been difficult to locate.
The Long-Lost Pubs of Faringdon
The following early pubs, which have been recorded as being in Faringdon did not make it into the 20th century and have either been demolished, renamed or changed use. Some have yet to be located and some may not have been actually in Faringdon. The dates given are from various sources and the pubs may have been in existence earlier or later than so far recorded:
Anchor, last mentioned 1864, unknown location.
Blue Boar, unknown location.
Craven Arms, last mentioned 1864, unknown location. (There was one on the Fernham Road in Uffington. Now a private house.)
George, Bull Street, now called London Street, publicans recorded 1824-81
Green Dragon, Gloucester Street, publicans recorded 1830-61, demolished pre-1863 to build the Corn Exchange.
Kings Head, Bell Street (misspelt?), possibly Bull Street now called London Street, recorded around 1700.
Masons Arms, Southampton Street, residents recorded from 1841-81. Now demolished.
Plough, Market Place, residents recorded from 1842-51.
Rising Sun, appears as a pub sign in an old photo from around the 1870s at the start of Southampton Street behind what became Barclay’s Bank. It may have been a tap room for the Faringdon Brewery that was there.
Royal Oak, London Street, resident landlords recorded from 1809-68. Said by a local resident to have actually been on the corner of Ferndale Street and Skinners Lane and later became the Bakers Arms.
Welsh Harp, Gloucester Street, 1760, publicans recorded (as Harp) 1830-52 (as Welsh Harp) 1854-81. The pub was named in the will of Nicholas Adams dated 1760 – “All that the said new tenement or mansion house and curtilage and garden ground and orchard thereto belonging with the appurtenances now converted into the said one messuage or tenement brewhouse stables garden and backside called the Welsh Harp held by the said yearly rents of one penny and one half penny now in the occupation of the said John Middleton and all that the said one half acre of arable land in Marsh Field in Westbrook aforesaid held by the yearly rent of three pence.”
White Horse, London Street, residents recorded from 1844-47. It might have become renamed as either The Bull Inn or The Star Inn around 1854 (speculation).
Windmill, Windmill Hill/Street, Faringdon, residents recorded from 1847-63. This may have been at or near an ‘old windmill’, which was marked on an 1876 map, just off the Stanford Road. It was at the end of a short track, which was opposite the footpath leading to Folly Hill.
Prince of Wales, Faringdon Road Station. Recorded landlords 1847-81. It has been listed mistakenly elsewhere as a Faringdon pub but it was in fact 5½ miles away at Challow on the Faringdon Road from Wantage. Faringdon Road Station was renamed Challow Station in 1864 when Faringdon got its own railway station. The pub continued trading even after the closure of the station in 1964 but it was destroyed by fire in 1999. It was then left abandoned for many years and eventually demolished in the 2010s in order to build a brand new house.
Faringdon Pubs into the 20th Century
The following are the 20 pubs mentioned in the above quotation, presented in a circular pub-crawl kind of route that you might have taken before most of them closed (* = the 4 still open). Plus the newer Sudbury House Hotel*, situated right on the outskirts of the town.
The Old Crown Coaching Inn*
2000. The Old Crown Coaching Inn in the Market Place is a Grade II listed, 16th century building. It was built on the site of an early hostelry and was re-fronted in Georgian times. This was the chief inn in Faringdon as far back as 1681 when Thomas Baskerville visited the town. Note the arch for the entry of horses and coaches. There were stables behind the inn for the horses. Through the archway there is a cobbled courtyard now used for outdoor seating.
There is a fine example of an Elizabethan external stairway, called the Judge’s Staircase, one of only two such remaining in England. This gave access to Manorial Courts which sat in the courtroom on the first floor. It is said that Judge Jeffreys held a court here after the Monmouth Rebellion, in 1685, when he hanged four or five local residents. The County Court held monthly sessions here until they moved to the Court in the Police Station on Coach Lane. It was also used an Excise Office.
A tunnel leading off towards the church from the cellars, and then to Wadley Manor, enabled Royalist soldiers in the Civil War to move in safety. The garages and storerooms at the rear were once stables. The stained glass window in the downstairs bar is probably of 14th Century glass and features a Lancastrian red rose which predates the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 (after which the Yorkist and Lancastrian houses merged under the Tudors). Some other windows have the emblem of Queen Eleanor of Castile (widow of Edward I) who died in 1214. Before the Civil War, England had no standing army and men were pressed into service. In 1640, there was an incident in the Crown when pressed men from Dorset sought out a Lieutenant Mohun for striking off the hand of a drummer boy who had threatened him and whom they believed had died as a result. The mob found Mohun and his fellow officers in the Crown; he tried to escape by climbing out of an upstairs window and clinging to the pole of the inn sign; but they poked him off with an 18 foot pike. He was then half drowned in an open sewer (now culverted under Cornmarket) but he survived. Unfortunately, a boy saw him climb out and told the Dorsetmen who then beat him to death. A hue and cry ensued and five Dorsetmen were hanged in Abingdon for the crime.
The Angel Inn
2004. The Portwell House Hotel to the right of the Crown used to be part of the Crown and was called the Angel Inn as far back as at least 1847 until the 1920’s. Also a Grade II listed building. It was where the drivers and labourers drank whilst their ‘betters’ patronised the Crown Inn. Around the side of this building is the doorways to the inn and also to the old Post & Telegraph Office and PO Savings Bank, which occupied the corner of the building between 1860’s-1900’s until the new Post Office was built in Marlborough Street in 1898. The bar was known as the Portwell Angel when it closed in 2018. There have been variously titled disco bars, wine bars or cellar bars on the ground floor over recent years. Since 2020 the building has been occupied by Las Chicas, a Spanish restaurant.
The Tap or The Crown Tap
2016. The Crown Tap was a semi-detached building in the car park behind the Crown. The earliest landlord record dates back to Henry Tuck 1891. Like the Angel Inn, but probably even more so, it was obviously there for the coach drivers and stable hands to be kept well away from their passengers who were generally of a much higher class. Access to the building is up a narrow lane, shown on the right in the photo, which comes from beside the newsagents at 22 Market Place in ‘The Narrows’. A ‘tap’ room was historically a place for the local brewery to sell its beverage, ‘tapped’ from the barrel to the local people, usually on-site or in a nearby building. In this case that would probably have been the Eagle Brewery that was situated where the town car park in Southampton Street is today. During the late 1940s and early 1950s the Tap was owned by the same people that had the Crown who’s name was Taylor and it was managed by Mr & Mrs Tipler. In the early 1960s it was converted into a private house called Crown Cottage.
The Salutation Hotel
c.1880s & 1994. Salutation Hotel, on Church Street opposite the church. Landlord records date back to Moses Pike 1830. More recently it became Faringdon Hotel. The building is on the site of a monks’ lodging house, which dated from when the Cistercian Order was given the Manor of Faringdon by King John in 1203. It is thought to be the site of a hunting lodge used by King Alfred the Great and his son Edward the Elder who succeeded him in 901. This was a coaching inn, the entrance visible in the middle of the older picture, which is around the side in Church Street opposite the church. The coach and horses used to go through the entrance into a yard and then exit into the Market Place between the old houses that used to be on the corner. The left-hand side of the hotel was later a doctors’ surgery. The hotel required numerous staff to run it and here are some of them photographed with mein host. The landlord is dressed in a frock coat and his wife is next to him holding a dog in her arms. In the 1890s, the hotel was extended by taking over and rebuilding the old house on the corner that had been occupied by Mr Pettifer, the builder. The hotel closed in the late 1990’s and was converted into flats.
The Wheatsheaf*
1953 & 1970’s. The Wheatsheaf, 5 London Street. Grade II listed building. The earliest landlord record dates back to James Tinson 1830. The stables were at the rear of the pub so the horse had to be taken down a narrow passage to reach them. The landlord in the 1950s was Mr Chandler who had been a cowboy in the U.S.A. and decorated the bar with his memorabilia of those days.
The Marlborough Arms
1950s? & 2000. The Marlborough Arms, 19 London Street. A Grade II listed building. Records of landlords exist between 1864-1931. Being on the corner of Swan Lane it was originally called The Swan (recorded as in Bull Street in 1830, London Street in 1840-1854). The pub closed before the 1980’s and became the Viceroy Tandoori Restaurant.
The Star Inn
Early 1900s, The Star Inn is on the left at 30 London Street, looking towards the town centre. (The Bull Inn can just be seen on the opposite side of the street – with a placard above the door). A Grade II listed building. There are records of publicans dating back to 1854. The Star Inn closed around the early 1970’s and became La Chaise Antique in 1972 until 2000 when it became a private house.
The Bull Inn
Early 1900s & 2021, The Bull Inn, 27 London Street is on the right, looking towards the town centre. (The Star Inn can just be seen on the left of the street behind the man on the ladder). There are records of publicans dating back to 1854. The Bull closed around 1992 when the licensees Jim and Heather Smythe went into voluntary liquidation and a new buyer could not be found. The Grade II listed building was then converted into a private house.
The Folly Inn*
1953 & 2012. The Folly Inn, 54 London Street. An early C19 Grade II listed building. Records date back to landlady Elizabeth Shaylor, The Folly House Inn, Bull Street, 1830.
Sudbury House Hotel & Conference Centre*
1990s. Sudbury House, since 1989 a hotel, restaurant and conference centre is the last property on London Street, on the corner with Stanford Road. The old house at the front, a Grade II Listed building, was built in 1703. It was originally the private home of Samuel Sadbury (not an error) and later a home and school run by Rev Bradley then Dr. Bowles. In the second photo London Street is to the right of the hotel and the Highworth Road and Badbury Hill are visible in the distance beyond the town. In the third photo, taken from London Street, the Folly Tower can be seen on the top of the hill across from the hotel car park.
The Bakers Arms
1993. The Bakers Arms in Ferndale Street on the corner of Skinners Lane. This street used to be called Back Street, then Union Street because Faringdon Poor Law Union, commonly known as the Workhouse, was situated there, just on the other side of the road to the pub.
A local resident researcher has said that the pub was originally called The Royal Oak. It later became The Baker’s Arms, presumably when a bakehouse was built behind it for the bakers in Skinners Lane. It was owned from 1830 by Angel Heavens and his family, who is mentioned in the first chapter of Tom Brown’s School Days.
The pub closed at the end of 1993 and is now a private house.
The Bell Hotel
c1900s, 1953 & 1995. Grade II listed building. Records of landlords of ‘The Bell’ exist from 1830-1931. However, the older photo taken some time around 1900 shows that it was called T. Franklin Commercial Hotel at that time. The bell is a prominent feature on the wall but there appears to be no traditional pub signage with that name. Originally it was once a tenement of Beaulieu Abbey where the Cistercian monks ran a hospice in the 12th and 13th Centuries. There are traces of a tunnel from the Bell leading towards the church. A stone mullioned window looking onto what is now the Quad, formerly Barclays Bank, is thought to be Tudor.
The building was re-fronted in the late 17th Century when it was a famous coaching inn with stables at the back. The stables have since been converted into kitchen and accommodation, and the cobbled courtyard where the coaches used to stop provides a pleasant sheltered area for today’s less equestrian customers.
When the Faringdon Railway branch line was opened in the 1860s the Bell advertised “every train arriving at Faringdon Station will be met and any person desiring to stay at the Bell Hotel will be conveyed with their luggage to the Hotel”
After many changes of ownership The Bell closed down in 2023.
The Red Lion
The Red Lion, Corn Market. Grade II listed building. This is possibly the oldest pub in Faringdon. It started trading in the 14th Century and became a famous coaching inn with extensive stabling. It is featured in the book Tom Brown’s Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes of Uffington, as the inn where the bully Flashman drank. The cut-off end of the building shows where Mr Taylor’s fish shop was demolished to create the site for the Post Office. After many changes of ownership and periods of closure, the pub finally closed in 2021 and is due to be converted into a cafe.
The Volunteer
1898, 1953, 1970’s & 1980/90s. The Volunteer Inn, Gloucester Street. Grade II listed building. The first recorded inn keeper was Giles Lewis in 1871. The pub closed 2017/18 and remains vacant.
The Swan Hotel*
1953 & 1995. The Swan Hotel, Christopher Square, Station Road on the corner of Bromsgrove. The first recorded landlord was William Shave 1877. In 1895 it was known as the Swan Tavern. The first photo shows Station Road before it was straightened and widened to provide a main route to the new A420 bypass. Note the Folly Tower poking up in the background of the last photo, taken from the Eagles across the road.
The White Hart Hotel
1953 & 1989. The White Hart, at the corner of Marlborough Street and Gravel Walk. The first recorded landlord was Joseph Rixon 1830. In the older photo, Ann’s garage can be seen on the right. That has been demolished and is now the Faringdon Garage (Peugeot) showroom. On the left in the newer photo is Aladdin’s Cave, an antique centre, which used to be Boffin’s butcher’s shop. That has since been demolished and replaced with a block of flats looking somewhat similar to the old pub next door. At about the same time, the pub closed in 1990 and was converted into flats.
The Duke of York
1953. The Duke of York Inn at the corner of Coxwell Street and Gravel Walk. The first recorded landlord was William Bradfield 1830. Since 1920 the licensee was Michael Giannadrea. The pub was still there in the late 1960’s but was eventually closed and demolished for the United Church to be built on this site. In 1900 it was reported that George Webb who for many years had been landlord of the inn committed suicide on the first day of the new year and that the inn was used also as a lodging house by most of the hawkers and others of the travelling fraternity who visited the town.
On the other side of Gravel Walk can be seen Boffin’s butcher’s shop with the public weighbridge in front. Out of shot to the right is the White Hart. Crossing the junction is Cadel’s milk churn lorry en route to the Express Dairy, Mervyn Carter, butcher’s boy, is on his delivery bike. On the right, the iron railings enclose Mr Absolom’s outfitter’s shop in Station Road.
The Gardeners Arms
1953. The Gardeners Arms, #10 Coxwell Street. The only inn keeper on record was Joseph Warman 1891. The pub closed sometime before the 1980s and was converted to two private houses. Almost hidden behind the house next door is the Methodist Church. Then the last building on the corner is the Duke of York and across the road (Gravel Walk) is the White Hart. All three pubs now gone.
The Queens Arms
1994. The Pink Elephant, at #40 Coxwell Street. It was originally The Queens Arms, landlords recorded 1844-1931. Charlie and Frances Honey, ran the Queens Arms in the 1960’s and 70’s. “Always miserable. served us beer even tho we were well under age”.
It later became The Sandpiper then The Riddle for a short time then finally closed down in the late 1990s and became a piano shop. In 2014 it was converted to a private house.
The Eagle Inn
c1910 & c1992. The Eagle Inn, #56 Coxwell Street. This is the last property in Coxwell Street as hereafter it becomes Coxwell Road. Elizabeth Sheppard was recorded as innkeeper in 1891, the last landlord was Chris Smith. The Eagle was still trading in 2006 but closed down soon after and was converted to a private house. The pub is just visible on the left in the older photo looking back towards the town. The building with the blank wall just beyond the pub sign was later demolished to make space for the pub car park. The Queens Arms (became the Pink Elephant) is half way down on the left and the Gardeners Arms is further down near the bottom of the street.
The Duke of Wellington
The Duke of Wellington,at the beginning of the Lechlade Road and before the infants school. Grade II listed building. The first recorded landlord was John Woolford 1830. It closed down in 2012 and is now a private house.
* still open to the public
References:
- The Changing Faces of Faringdon and Surrounding Villages – Bk1 p66-71. By Rosemary Church, Jim Brown, Millie Bryan and Beryl Newman. Robert Boyd Publications. Now out of print.
- Public Houses, Inns & Taverns of Berkshire – https://pubshistory.com/Berkshire/index.shtml
- Public Houses, Inns & Taverns of Oxfordshire – https://pubshistory.com/Oxfordshire/index.shtml
Researched by Ian Lee, November 2019.