The Anchor

Oxford is an idyllic place: a city in name only, it really has much more the feel of a medium-sized town. Its leafy northern suburbs are particularly gorgeous, but during my student days I wouldn't often venture that far out of the centre. One year, some friends of mine rented a house on Polstead Road which boasted a Blue Plaque commemorating the fact that T.E. Lawrence once lived there. They had two or three 'Lawrence of Arabia' costume parties during that year, but those were probably the only occasions on which I walked down that road, and, if I had noted the large-ish pub at the western end of it, it had not made any deep impression on me. I'm not sure if I'd ever looked inside it in those days.

But then, a few years later, another friend of mine - a Distinguished Theologian, funnily enough - was living on that street while he laboured over his doctoral thesis. I was still visiting Oxford fairly regularly while in my first job (as an English teacher in a boarding school in Somerset), and then, quite soon, I found myself living in the city again myself.... in the northern suburbs, not too far from the Distinguished Theologian. And somewhere about that time, the early '90s this would have been, a remarkable thing happened to that pub on the corner of Polstead Road. For a year or two, it became very nearly the best pub in the world.

Now, in many ways, it really shouldn't have insinuated its way into my heart so. It failed to satisfy a number of the key criteria I have identified as crucial to a great bar. The decoration was a little too swish (lots of art deco fittings: tastefully chosen, quite gorgeous, but just too fancy for a down-to-earth boozer). It was a little too light and airy (that one year I was hanging out there all the time we enjoyed an exceptionally sunny spring and summer). The food - fantastic! - was rather more elaborate than we really need in our local (it was a pioneering 'gastro-pub', before that phenomenon had really taken off).

No, not at all my usual ideal, but..... so much love had been lavished on the reconstructed Anchor that it was difficult even for me to curmudge about it too much. It was a retirement project for an affable chap called Charlie, who had apparently spent most of his working life as a salesman for a brewery and so knew the pub trade inside and out.

If the place was just a bit too genteel and upmarket for my usual tastes, there were many things about it that were just right. This is the kind of place I dream about when dissatisfaction with my current bar options overwhelms me. It was a traditional Victorian 'corner house' - redbrick exterior and tiled walls within. Two stout wooden bars, of ideal leaning height. An excellent selection of beers on draught. And, ah yes, not one, not two, but three of the loveliest barmaids I have ever known. Heaven.

As with all things of beauty, of course it did not last. The custom, I imagine, was not quite strong enough to repay the massive investment Charlie had made in renovating the place, and he gave up on the project after a year or two. The Anchor quickly reverted to being an unremarkable neighbourhood dive, barely distinguishable from the dozen or so other pubs in that corner of the city. But, for one glorious summer, at least, it had come astonishingly close to pub perfection.