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The History
of The Fox ...
... probably goes back more than two hundred years,
and I have pieced together some of the pub's story so that
 customers and licensees who follow me will have some idea of
who and what went before them.
What
follows is the information I have gathered since I
took over at The Fox in March 2004. To the best of my
knowledge, the names and dates are correct and accurate, but
I am conscious that this is not a complete history of the pub,
so if you have any more detail you can add, I would
be
very pleased to hear from you.
Anyone
interested in the history of Steventon village should search
out a copy of "The Story of Steventon" by A.L.H Baylis, from
which much interesting and useful information for these
pages has been gleaned.
Peter Kidd
Landlord
For
Sale: Old-established
Coaching Inn
Customers entering The
Fox today will see documentary evidence of The Fox Inn's
existence as a public house going back nearly 200 years. On display
in our entrance hall is a poster advertising The Fox Inn for
sale by Mr. Stevens
on behalf of the estate of the late
John Tyrrell. The
sale was to take place by auction at two o'clock on Friday 17 March,
1828, and the detail of the advertisement is as follows:
"Lot I. All that valuable old-established Public
House called The Fox Inn.
With Yard, Garden, Barn, Stable, Cowhouse, Pigstyes, and
other conveniences, and a capital Orchard well stocked
with Fruit Trees. The site of the whole contains
upwards of an Acre, by measure, and is situate in the
pleasant village of Steventon, four miles from Abingdon.
The House is well situate for business and capable of
great improvements. The Oxford and Southampton
Coach calls daily. To this Lot is added Pasture
for one Cow, in all the Commonable places in Steventon,
aforesaid."
So it is
clear that The Fox had been a successful inn for some years
before, but was much more than just a public house, having
farm buildings and pastures associated with it.
 Indeed the photograph on
the left, which unfortunately is not dated, clearly shows
the barn mentioned in the advertisement sitting snugly
between The Fox Inn and The Railway House, now called
The Cherry
Tree.
The Fox and GWR
The Fox has been linked to the development of public
transport through its history. As seen above, the
horse-drawn mail coach called daily at the pub, and the pub
took a part in the development of rail travel too. Work on
the Great Western Railway began in 1835, and the line
reached Steventon in May 1840. The village was the GWR
terminus for just 7 weeks, until the station at Uffington
was opened, and the line from London to Bristol was
completed in June of the following year. However, back
in May 1840, The Fox Inn was the venue for a meeting of the
Abingdon District Turnpike, when they discussed where the
toll gates should be situated when Steventon station was
opened.
Steventon station
operated until 1964, when it was closed as part of Dr.
Beeching's cuts to the rail network.
The Cherry Tree
As can be seen in the photograph above, our neighbour has
not always been known as The Cherry Tree, and for many years
was called The Railway House. But going back to
1828, when The Fox was being auctioned by Mr. Stevens, it is
not clear whether the pub we now know as The Cherry Tree
even existed. In 1854, it was certainly known as The
Railway House, but the 1828 auction poster offers
for sale:
"Lot II. A Close of
Rich Pasture Land Called Cherry Croft, situate adjacent
to Lot I [The Fox Inn] containing, by estimation, one
Acre, more or less."
So perhaps the building
that was once The Railway House and is now The Cherry Tree was,
in 1828, the private
home of a cherry farmer. It is not inconceivable,
because even today you will find soft fruit being farmed on the
fertile land at
the top of Steventon Hill. Then again, it's possible
that the "Rich Pasture Land Called Cherry Croft" lay behind
The Fox, not beside it, and that as far back as 1828 The Fox
and its neighbour were both serving ale to passing
travellers on the main Oxford - Southampton road.
Timsbury House
The large stone-built house opposite The Fox was constructed
by the Victorian coal merchant who had the main contract to supply
coal to the Steventon railway station. The house,
called Timsbury House, was named after his home village in
Somerset, and the railway contract was
valuable enough for the coal merchant to build a house of
this size; indeed he also built the terraced houses opposite
The Cherry Tree pub
 for his workers.
For many years, the
building operated as a guest house. As far back as
1887, it was known as the Timsbury Villa, and operated under
this name for at least 80 years. In 1951, it was run by a Mrs.
Randall exclusively for staff working at what was then known
as the
Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) at
Harwell.
It was Geoff Melotti who
transformed the guest house into a hotel, extending the
building at the rear and adding more bedrooms, a
function room and restaurant, and even a swimming pool and
sauna to the rear, and renaming it The Timsbury Arms
Hotel. In the 1990s, the hotel was bought
by a pub company and renamed The Steventon Inn until 2004,
when it was sold for re-development and converted back to a
private dwelling. The story came full circle when the
building was renamed Timsbury House in 2005.
Dispensing Pints and Gallons
At some
time early in the twentieth century, when the internal
combustion engine was threatening traditional horse power,
the Fox's barn mentioned above was demolished to
make way for a garage and filling station.
 Photographs like the one
here, currently on display in the
bar, show the filling
station operating where the pub car park now stands.
The filling station was owned also by
Geoff Melotti, and continued trading into the 1970s.
Pub and Restaurant
It was my predecessor,
Larry Hammans, who
transformed The Fox into the pub and restaurant you see now.
In the late 1980s, he extended the back of the building,
enlarging the kitchen and building a restaurant behind the
main bar. The bar counter itself was turned through
ninety degrees to the position you'll find it today. It was Larry who built
the fishpond in our garden, as well as laying the
block-paved patio. With the help of his regulars,
Larry did much of the work himself; whatever else, Larry
certainly worked hard to make The Fox fit for the
twenty-first century.
'Round the Harbour
Around the time Larry was extending The Fox, you might well
have bumped into a
group of revellers going "round the
harbour", a term for a pub crawl between the
 three
pubs - The Fox, The Cherry Tree and
The Timsbury
Arms - the term coined by Dennis Bowler and his
drinking partner, "Mac". Being less than
fifty yards apart,
the three hostelries shared a lot of customers, and the Harbour
Tour became such a local fixture that the Timsbury Arms went so
far as displaying a sign directing people "To The Ferry"!
Pictured here at The Fox in 2007
(and not looking too happy -
perhaps the bar staff have just called time!), Dennis Bowler lives in Harwell village and is still an occasional visitor
to The Fox. He is of an age now that he can enjoy our
Senior Citizen's
Lunchtime
Special, but the passing years and the
demise of the Timsbury
 Arms means he can no longer enjoy
going "round the harbour" in Steventon.
From
Morland to Greene King
In 1998 the
Morland brewery in Abingdon was sold to
Greene
King based in Bury St. Edmunds, and the Abingdon brewer's
dark blue and maroon colour scheme was
replaced with the
Suffolk brewer's green and cream, the colours of The Fox
Inn today.
We at The Fox are proud to be part of the
Greene King estate, but we are even more proud of our
heritage, and Morland Original bitter remains the biggest
selling of our
real ales.
In 2006, the
bar received its first
significant refurbishment
since the early 90s, and we chose a shade of cream similar to
Greene King's corporate colours - not through any sense of
loyalty but because it would reflect more light into the
room. Our customers certainly approved of the change,
and the addition of some potted plants means that The
Fox
today is a pleasant mix of green and cream both inside and
out.
Flooded!
Like
most of the south of England, on Friday 20 July 2007 Steventon received
12 hours' solid
torrential rain - twice the normal monthly rainfall for July in just half a
 day. Despite our efforts to hold the excess water in
the car park, bit by bit the water level crept up the side of the
building until it began lapping at the front doorstep.
The
"high-tide" mark crept up the hallway and around the corner leading to
the restaurant area. Very soon, there was the un-nerving
"slap-slap" of Wellington boots on sodden carpet as staff moved around the
pub trying to serve the customers stranded at The Fox. But The Fox remained open,
continuing to serve drinks as staff and customers watched in shocked amazement at the
river flowing past the window on what a
few hours earlier had
been a
busy village high street.
The flood waters
marched around the corner of the pub and into the garden. The new
pergola, erected at the time
smoking was made illegal in
public places, was no match for water rushing
in at ground level. By this time the restaurant carpet was
 ruined,
the kitchen was under threat, and we discovered that water was coming
into the bar through the brickwork of the walls!
Speaking to our older
customers, many of whom have lived in the village most of their lives, the flood
of 2007 rose about two inches higher than the last significant flood in
1947, making it the worst flooding seen in Steventon in living memory.
The Fox came off
relatively lightly. We had more than a foot of water in the car park,
but no more than two inches in the pub. Many of our
neighbours and customers suffered
far worse, some still a foot under water a week later, and
having seen television pictures of the poor
residents of Gloucester and Tewksbury, we realise how lucky we were.
The Story
Continues
So that is as much of the history of The Fox Inn as I have
managed to piece together so far, but the story continues
each day that we open the door and greet our next customer.
As well as the
history of the pub itself, I have been able to trace most of
the lineage of licensees
who traded at The Fox going back even farther than the 1828 poster in
our entrance hall. If you have any further details, I
would be very pleased to
hear from you. |
