The Kings Arms, Oxford

Historic inn, no doubt much changed over time but still retaining much character in the various refurbished rooms and spaces around the multi-faceted central servery. Nowadays a Young's pub, with 'Original' (£4.15) and Special supplemented on seven of the 11 handpumps by Tribute, Proper Job, Bath Ales Gem and a couple of ciders.

A large and prominent street corner pub, it doesn’t look anything particularly special from the outside and could perhaps pass for a hotel, but is certainly worth making the effort to go in and not just walking on by to find something that looks a little more inviting. Internally it has a large, multi-roomed layout, with a bar counter to the right servicing two of these rooms. It was pretty much full to capacity on our Friday early evening visit, and we just managed to bag a sofa squeezed in to a small space under the stairs in a snug at the rear known as The Office. This, and the adjacent bar, almost had the feel of a separate pub, with glazed wooden partitioning running up the length of the adjoining corridor making it quite distinct from the rest of the pub. This was a cosy old room with polished wooden boards on the floor as well as a large rug, wood panelling on the walls giving it a rather elegant feel and plenty of photographs of university sports teams. Seating was mostly Chesterfield sofas and an old fireplace was off to one side, although this appeared to be unused. The adjoining bar was similarly cosy with plenty of pewter tankards hanging from the ceiling and a large collection of beer mats on the wall. The rest of the pub appeared pleasant enough but without the same cosy charm, having predominantly green plasterwork and plenty of old portrait pictures on the wall. Beers on tap were Young’s Bitter, Young’s Special, Hanlon’s Yellow Hammer, Tribute, Directors, Bath Ales Gem and Bombardier, whilst a further pump appeared to have run out. After that lot, the solitary cider was Thatcher’s Gold. All in all, well worth checking out.