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Picture source: Steve Daniels

The Fox & Hounds was situated at 279 Abingdon Road, closing in 2007. This pub was built in 1929 by Oxford architect, JR Wilkins, replacing an earlier pub of the same name. It closed in 2007, and was demolished in July 2013 with a Tesco Express store built on the site.

Allegedly there were said to be problems with asbestos that would make renovations expensive, so the pub was mothballed. I think there was a fire (as often happens) that sealed the fate of the place. I recall it as a busy place with a dated mock Tudor interior.

John Foreman (March 2021)

Review from tantallon.org.uk:

Morrells Varsity £1.98 (25.vii.1998) It's on the corner of Abingdon Road and Weirs Lane and has huge signs outside it informing the passerby that it's open all day, and has Sky Television. It also has a big Aunt Sally out the back which is visible from the road/space. This has an unfortunately-named restaurant, the "Forester's Feast"  attached, with children's play areas indoors and out. It's full of wooden beams and pub brasses and horsaphernalia and big signs saying "ALES AND STOUT". They're lying on the second point. Another sign towards the Abingdon Road door says "Sod the Turf". Ha ha. Fans of machines will be pleased to note that they have a jelly bean machine and a mini egg machine. There's a huge car park in which they sometimes hold car boot sales, and a ramped door marked "FAMILY ENTRANCE". There's also two sets of facilities, 15 degrees in one, and 30 degrees in the other. (30 degrees, oddly, in the "family" end rather than the "raucous pubgoer" end.) The man behind the bar reckoned that Whitbread'd take it over when Morrells goes under. It'll be much the same, except the beers'll be Flowers and Boddingtons I'll expect. (25.vii.1998)

From an article by Tony Goulding, The Oxford Drinker, Apr-May 2019:

"The Tesco store on the corner of Weirs Lane (leading to Donnington Bridge) occupies the site of a former Morrells pub, the Fox & Hounds, built in 1926 and in the late 1970s and 1980s part of the Buccaneers Inns chain,one of the first serving food. Bass on hand pump was a rare feature in a small number of Morrells pubs. Greene King acquired the pub in 2000 and a gradual decline in fortunes ended in closure in 2010 but, in a grubby state, demolition didn't come until 2014."

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