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Picture source: Stephanie Jenkins http://www.headington.org.uk/history/pubs/xpubs.htm

The Cavalier was situated at 148-150 Copse Lane. This was the first pub built in Oxford after WWII, in 1956. It closed in 2008 and was demolished in 2010 and student accommodation built on its site.

The nearest pub to me was the Cavalier on Copse Lane in Northway, and Copse Lane was known as ‘Beirut’. Their off-licence would sell cider to a 12-year-old, and when I was a kid I used to hear the players shouting while they played Aunt Sally. It was very territorial in the 1960s and 1970s, and if you lived in Marston you didn’t go to Northway and vice versa. But I had cousins in Marston, and they were big boys!”

Graham Baker, via Oxford Drinker website (August 2022)

Review from tantallon.org.uk:

Friary Meux Bitter £1.60 Stella Artois £2.40 (26.vii.1998) Vanguard Inns is the leasing division of Allied Domecq. The maroon and gold Halls paintwork of this pub has been replaced by the green of Vanguard, and the inside has been redone with plush carpets, curtains, two-tone wallpaper, and a seven foot tall model of the Academy Award statuette in the corridor. Surprisingly for where it is, there's two or three bitters on tap, including the above-mentioned Friary Meux bitter. At quarter to seven on a Sunday evening the clientele were singing Vindaloo at the tops of their voices. Didn't see the fishtank, though. (26.vii.1998) Liz Beaumont Bissell writes (before the renovation): All the denizens of this place would appear to be related to one another, in many cases several times over. Rather scary, really. Well, the fish in the large mouldering fish-tank look scared, anyway. Come in here in sub-fusc, and you'd probably end up in the fish-tank yourself. Not recommended.

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