Patrick Comerford
Over the past few years, I have begun to recognise some of my favourite pubs in Oxford. On the evening before my surgical procedure last week, two of us had dinner in King’s Arms, close to Hertford College, the Bridge of Sighs and Wadham College, on the corner of Parks Road and Holywell Street, opposite the New Bodleian Library.
A local myth boasts that the KA has the highest IQ per square foot of any pub or bar in the world.
Other pubs I have got to know in recent years include the Lamb and Flag, which has got a new lease of life on Saint Giles; the White Horse, squeezed in between Blackwell’s shopfronts on Broad Street; the Crown on Cornmarket Street; the Head of the River by the river at Folly Bridge; the Rose and Crown on North Parade, between Woodstock Road and Banbury Road; the Cheuquers off the High Street; the Turf Tavern in Saint Helen’s Passage, which claims it has Oxford’s ‘only city walled garden’; and Four Candles on George Street, if only for its name.
And, of course, with all its past literary associations, I eagerly await the reopening of the Eagle and Child (the ‘Bird and the Babe’) across the street from the Lamb and Flag on Saint Giles.
But on my three return journeys between the hospitals and clinics in Headington and the centre of Oxford over the past six or seven weeks or so, I have noticed the names of three pubs on St Clement’s Road that are eye-catching.
When I first noticed Port Mahon at 82 St Clement’s Street, I wondered whether it had been named after an Irish admiral and some Irish port I had never heard about – after all, one of my great-grandmothers was Margaret Mahon or McMahon (1847-1924).
But, in fact, Port Mahon was the Anglicised name given long before the Napoleonic wars by the British navy to Mahón, also known in Catalan as Maó or Mahó, the capital and second largest city of Menorca in the Balearic Islands.
Mahón has one of the longest natural harbours in the world: it is 5 km long, up to 900 metres wide, and the water is deep but remains mostly clear. The name comes not from Irish general or admiral among the Wild Geese in Spain, not even from Patrice de MacMahon (1808-1893), the President of France (1873-1879) who had Irish ancestry. Rather, the name of Mahón or Maó is said to come from a Carthaginian general and Hannibal’s brother, Mago Barca, said to have sought refuge there in 205 BCE.
Menorca was captured in 1708 by a joint British-Dutch force during the War of the Spanish Succession. Its status as a British possession was confirmed by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. While Menorca was a British dependency, the capital was moved from Ciutadella de Menorca to Mahón, where the governors included the Irish-born General Richard Kane (1662-1736).
The harbour and the town were known as Port Mahon until the island was lost to the French in 1756 after the naval Battle of Menorca and the final Siege of Fort St Philip. But when the French were defeated in the Seven Years’ War, the island became British once more in 1763.
Britain surrendered Menorca again in 1782, and it was transferred to Spain in 1783 as part of the Peace of Paris. Britain captured the island for a third time in 1798, but it passed to Spain under the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, and it has remained Spanish ever since.
Mahón – and not President Patrice MacMahon – is said to given its name to Mayonnaise. The word seems to have appeared in French cuisine for the first time in 1806. But, according to Émile Littré, when Mahón and Menorca were captured by the Duc de Richelieu in 1756, his cook presented him with a sauce he called mahonnaise, and made with egg and oil, although several versions of similar sauces already existed in France and in Spain.
As for Port Mahon at 82 St Clement’s Street, Oxford, it was built on the site of an orchard in 1710, two years after the Battle of Port Mahon or Battle of Menorca in 1708, when British forces captured the port and the island of Minorca from the French. A captain in the British navy was given this pub to reward his bravery, it has retained its name ever since, and today it is one of the oldest surviving pubs in Oxford.
It is a Grade II-listed pub with several rooms, and a strange layout. The main room is up six steps from the street, and then you go down steps to the other room. The bar serves both at two levels with the lower room laid out for dining and the upper room very much a bar.
The three-storey building dates from early 18th century, with alterations made over time,. It is built of rubble on a moulded stone plinth, and with cellars, two attic dormers and a Welsh slate roof.
Six steps with iron handrails lead up to the front doorway, with the north elevation facing onto the street, and the front doorway has a semi-circular stone head. The ground floor has two plain sash windows in stone frames, and the first floor has two three-light 18th century sash windows, with a blind semi-circular headed window in between.
Above this is another window that breaks through the eaves and that has a pediment and scrolled sides. There is a stone band above the first floor windows and the two stacks are of brick. The attic dormers have 19th century sash windows.
A stone extension or wing on the south-east angle has a Welsh slate hipped roof and an 18th century sash windows with stone frames, cills and architraves. There is a gabled staircase projection at the back on the south and there are modern one-storey additions on the west.
Port Mahon on St Clement’s Street was closed for a time last summer but reopened later in the year after Greene King spent £190,000 on refurbishing the interior. During last year’s refurbishing and updating, Port Mahon retained some original interior features, including the fireplaces. It now has a two-level layout, with the main room accessed through steps and another room downstairs, where the bar serves both levels.
Port Mahon is being run by Jonathan and Renee Perritt who also operate pubs in London. It is a favourite with real ale drinkers, with guest beers, and it also offers live music and food – including, even, its own ‘Mahon Mayo.’
Some of the neighbouring pubs with curious names that I have noticed on those return journeys include the Cape of Good Hope, at the corner of The Plain, where Cowley Road meets St Clement's Street and Headington Road, and the Oranges and Lemons – which seems such an appropriate names for St Clement’s.
I may not be as familiar with the pubs in Oxford as I am with those in Cambridge – but I look forward to continuing my explorations once I’m back on my feet fully again.
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