Category: UK

I’m going to be honest, this bar isn’t likely to win many awards for being the best advertised and signed, although that gives it something of a speakeasy feel which adds to the excitement of proceedings. Although this was the eleventh and final venue of the day, it was the one that we were most looking forwards to, it’s a cellar bar with micro-pub vibes. I decided that Julian was the most social (and ultimately the most expendable if it was the wrong door) and he tried the door of what we really weren’t entirely sure was the right place, but it’s that door marked with “cash only” which is down the steps.

The indoor signage is really rather good though even if it’s rather more anonymous from the outside.

The inside which was a little dark, but that added to the atmosphere and the welcome was immediate and friendly from the team member. It was also good to see James in the pub, it was his check-ins on Untappd which had caught my eye about this place. This is evidence indeed that social media can lead to right decisions.

The beer list is on Untappd and there’s a particularly strong list of cans that are available. There are three cask beers and seven keg beers and I was slightly disappointed we didn’t have enough time before our train to fully investigate these. It’s a well-curated beer list and there are some really tempting options on there.

I went for the Aeronaut from Abbeydale Brewery and it had a rather pleasant flavour of stone fruit and it was smooth, rich and really quite decadent. A very decent little number and Julian went for the same, noting on Untappd that it was “very tasty”, which is great praise indeed.

Also, Julian produced, like a proud Victorian inventor, his latest acquisition from John Lewis, as he’s really rather middle class, a foldable fan which can be charged via USB. I was a little tempted by it, I’ll wait until there’s a cheap one though as I get muddled up in decadent department stores, but it was very useful given the extreme heat of Lowestoft.

Anyway, I’ve digressed into shopping related items and away from just how good this bar is. The beer selection here was the best of the day, the atmosphere was certainly up there and the engagement from the team member was the best of the day. It’s fair to say that I very much liked it here and I’m also going to see if Julian can be tempted to go there again when we visit again for part two of our Lowestoft study tour. It was really all rather lovely.

The Oxford Arms was our tenth visit of the day to a venue selling alcoholic beverages and I can already hear my two loyal blog readers bemused to where eight and nine have gone. So, eight was the Lowestoft Tandoori and I’ll come back to that in another post as it’s not really a pub, with number nine being the Falcon. Unfortunately, I was in some sort of food coma by then due to the portion sizes at the Indian, so I sat in the garden with a rum, which was Julian’s bright idea to ‘settle my nerves’, meaning I didn’t really look around inside. To be fair to the Falcon, and we are rigorous in our study tours, we’ll revisit it on the next trip.

The pub was built in the late nineteenth century and it was formerly known as the Oxford Stores and I’m starting to wonder if there’s a single pub in Lowestoft that hasn’t changed its name at some point. The above map is from the 1880s and it shows that at the time the area was fields, the pub is in the centre-right of this white space. The pub was built by Youngman & Preston and there was an application made in September 1897 to change the licence from George Henry Read to James Charles Butcher, so I’m guessing that the pub first opened in around 1890. Tragedy struck just weeks later as the Evening Star reported:

“On Sunday evening Mr. James Butcher, landlord of the Oxford Stores, at the corner of St. Margaret’s and Oxford Roads, Lowestoft, died suddenly. The deceased, who was married, and about 33 years of age, was well known and popular. He formerly kept the Waggon and Horses, on the Beach, and on the licence of the High Street house being removed during the widening of that thoroughfare, he went to the new house. The cause of death was an affection of the brain, from which he suffered during the summer, but apparently recovered. He was taken ill on Wednesday night, and though attended by Dr. Bell, the seizure terminated fatally.”

All rather sad, especially as in 1911, the landlord William Butcher died at the pub aged just 39 years old and William’s wife had died at the venue the year before. They don’t sound like the most uplifting first few years of opening.

Julian came here over fifty years ago, which is quite a sobering thought. Today, the venue shows live sports and there are some occasional music events to excite and delight the local denizens.

Inside the pub, there’s a pool table and general games area. As an Everton fan (I say fan, that is a rather aspirational way of saying that I sort of look at the league tables every week) I’ve mentally blocked out something in the photo.

The main bar and my legs.

I mentioned sobering thoughts earlier on in this post and that’s evident here, with Julian opting for a delicious lemonade. Or at least until he realised these things no longer have sugar, just a heap of aspartame which I personally think is likely potentially more dangerous than the sugar that the authorities have obsessively removed, but there we go. There weren’t any real ales here and the drinks selection was quite limited, which was the main reason for Julian’s less than decadent choice.

I wasn’t having sobering thoughts, I had half a pint of Guinness and it tasted as expected and was at the appropriate temperature.

There’s a breakfast menu and the venue also sells food at lunchtimes.

This is a good idea in the toilets given the ridiculously hot weather that we’ve been having recently.

Overall, this felt like a traditional community pub and it offered a friendly welcome and some minor interest from locals on who these new customers were when we entered. The service was efficient, the venue was clean and I rather liked the heritage of the pub, although the separate rooms of the lounge bar and the saloon that once existed have all been knocked through. The drinks selection here isn’t really something that I’m personally looking for, although Guinness is always a decent fall-back arrangement, but the pricing was low. The online reviews are very positive and I’m fairly confident that this is the sort of pub that will be here for generations to come.