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Picture source: Movement80

The Crown & Thistle was situated at 132 Old Road, Headington and closed on 31st December, 2011. This pub was built on the site of the Titup Hall Inn, which was demolished in the mid-19th century.

Review from tantallon.org.uk:

Morrells Oxford Bitter £1.87 Comes in two halves, is carpeted, and has a fantastic, big Time bell. I think you can ring for service if the staff are in the other half on it. I tried this the second time I came, only to discover the barman standing behind me tidying the ashtrays. Whoops. When I was there on a Saturday night in May 1997, they were playing a tape loop which had rather a lot of Madness and Elvis Costello on it. There was also a very quiet, anoraked, slightly malodorous man with a hammer-blackened fingernail sitting at a table. Every so often he would walk up to the bar and ask for a glass of water. The barman would say "I don't make my living selling glasses of water" and the strange man would return to his seat. The next time I came, in September 1998, the lounge bar had children called Charlotte swarming round the video games, while the public bar had all of the customers squeezed into one end while a man with a keyboard and a microphone sang "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do". It's enough to make you long for Neil Sedaka it is. Should have been warned when, approaching it from the Shotover end of Old Road, we saw a huge cross of St George painted on the side, annotated gules with "It's coming home". Don't know how it squares with the title of the pub, or the small collection of Scottish paraphernalia they have in the lounge bar. They were out of Varsity that time, but they normally do it. The other weird thing about this place is that the decor is mostly the sort of mirrors you find in pubs, advertising some sort of defunct drink or other. There's a really odd one above the bar in the Lounge, in the shape of a loaf of bread cross section. (12.ix.1998) James Davey says: They've got no loo roll ! (12.ix.1998)

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