#284 Three Goats Heads, Oxford : 1998 to 2021

This will only be a short entry, but it is a proper pub and well worth a visit...especially if you like Sam Smith's.

Our first visit was on the evening of Saturday 5th September 1998 and, as it was quite late, this was my only shot of the pub.

I have little recollection of the pub other than I remembered it for more than just it's unusual name. I recalled that it was a good, proper pub, but that's about all!

So, on our recent visit to Oxford, the Three Goats Heads was one of the pubs I wanted  to revisit. However, I had no idea where it was located, but in this day and age of Google Maps, that wasn't a problem. We'd finished lunch in the Four Candles (#263) and, after consulting the map app on my phone, I realised that it was very close to us. This how it looked on the rainy afternoon of Friday 21st May 2021.
 

This was the first Saturday that indoor opening of pubs had been allowed, but it was very quiet inside. (Probably because of the cold, wet weather, a lack of tourists/shoppers and a reluctance to go out!)

I'm not a fan of Old Brewery Bitter, so I had a pint of the Double Four Lager, which was OK, but it's no Carling! The décor was typical of other Sam Smith's pubs I've been to - dark wood and lots of framed photos - not particularly to my taste as it all seems to be a bit too regimented. (I like the more random, higgledy-piggledy look of old school boozers!) Still, there are many worse.

We chatted a bit to the landlady who informed us that it has been a Sam Smith's pub since the mid 1980's. 

If you can find it, the Three Goats Heads is well worth a visit, especially if you're a Sam Smith's fan!

#263 The Four Candles, Oxford : 1998 to 2019 (That Déja vu Feeling All Over Again!)

It is very rare that the same pub crops up in consecutive posts on this blog (under the original premise, it should be impossible) and yet here it is.

As we sat upstairs in the The Four Candles I had the feeling that I'd been here before. I thought I remembered it as the place where a fairly distinguished middle-aged gentleman claimed to know me. He was well-spoken dressed in proper teacher/lecturer mode (complete with elbow patches on his jacket). He sat down with us and expected a pint. In these circumstances, I'm far too nice, but, fortunately my friends (in no uncertain terms) told him to go away!

But, no! This couldn't be the same place. So I dismissed the idea and didn't mention it to anyone. That was until today, when I was going through my old photos looking for potential new blog posts and I came across this picture from 1998!

I'm fairly sure that it was lunchtime on Saturday 5th September 1998 (We had three sessions in Oxford on that trip!). Back then it was a Yates's Wine Lodge and I have no other recollections about it.

Fast forward to lunchtime on Saturday 29th July 2019 and this was the view.

Further research (What Pub) shows that it, briefly, became a Slug & Lettuce pub in 2007/08 and then became a Wetherspoon's in 2008.

This is a perfect example of why I first started taking these pictures in 1986 and there will be another example in the following weeks of how memory doesn't necessarily log everything for future reference.