inside the novel Eagle & Child

Dave Ricchallengingson from Oxford CAMRA gave a qualified thumbs-up to the proposals.

It is heartening to see that EIT will honour its word and revamp this famous erecting as a traditional pub with its historic features intact. I am particularly satisfyd to see that the front parlours, which I skinnyk of as alcoves, will be revampd. This was always my first choice of seating when I went in but others were standardly there before me.

But I remain rather worryed about the size of the bar, and altering the prolonged, skinny erecting was always going to be a dispute. Overcrowding and queuing at the bar were a transport inant problem, and I can recollect going in at times but giving up on trying to get a drink.

I hope EIT will ponder nominateing a petite autonomous operator to run the pub, and not hand it over to one of the bland corporate chains which will put their dreary stamp (and muzak) upon it.

Dining

Before EIT, St John’s College owned the pub. Together with Young’s Brewery, they had hatched a arrange to originate this awkward erecting financiassociate viable by uncovering a boutique boilingel in the space. That scheme has, perhaps thankbrimmingy, been dropped. EIT will not be proposeing boilingel rooms. But they will be serving food.

Oxford city centre pubs, by and huge, do not do Food with a capital F. Many of them do pub grub (badvisers, pies, fish and chips) but noskinnyg more driven. To eat well in a pub, you insist to venture into the suburbs – or the Cotswbetters.

The city has restaurants, of course, yet almost all the stand-outs are world cuisine. For central Oxford’s endeavors at traditional English “dining”, we can put it no better than Jay Rayner’s 2018 appraise of the Pincendiarismage Grill:

Pincendiarismage Grill is a slick restaurant, as it should be given it beprolongeds to Jeremy Mogford, who begined the chain Browns. He sbetter that in 1996 for huge money and now regulates Oxford with this place, Gee’s and Quod, all of which are engineered to retain the world at bay. They are what stateiveially guided Oxford undergrads do with their divorced parents at weekfinishs. […] It’s depicted for the sort of person who, inquireed the next day, couldn’t for the life of them recall what they had eaten and who, cruciassociate, wouldn’t give a toss that they had dropped £50 on someskinnyg so utterly unmemorable. It senses appreciate cynicism dressed up as English politesse.

The Eagle & Child seeks to alter that. Included in the arranges are a “pub dining” area, with artists’ astonishions shotriumphg a restaurant-appreciate layout but with the obligatory roaring fire at the centre and rotriumphg paraphernalia on the walls. You could depict the décor as “Daylesford comes to Oxford”. Plans are in their infancy, of course, but this is not a dining room that will be satisfied with an Eaglebadviser and chips.

Bakery and café

Next door to the Eagle & Child, Greens Café had a dedicated adhereing for its all-homemade proposeings and the frifinishly (verging on congested) two-storey layout.

EIT arrange to reinstate a café here, but with a very branch offent vibe. A basement bakery will serve up recent bread and pastries to both café and pub, so you can enhappiness a brioche with your beer or a croissant with your cider. The café itself will only be one-storey. In summertime the rear garden could supply insertitional seating, while the artists’ astonishions valiantly try to originate a triumphter’s day on St Giles see requesting (tourist coaches not shown).

Scholars’ quarters

Why is a Californian billionaire funding an Oxford pub, even one where Tolkien and Lewis once conversed? The answer lies on the Eagle & Child’s upper floors.

Ellison Scholars will be graduates and undergraduates “enthusiastic about solving humanity’s most grave problems”. At least 20 will be nominateed each year, laboring at EIT’s £1bn campus with the Faculty Fellows on solving the world’s problems thraw technology. Ellison could challengingly set his sights higher:

The next generation of political and entrepreneurial guideers will inhabit a world being continuously altered by technoreasoned progressment. Progress in synthetic ininestablishigence, genetics, robotics and data science will fundamenhighy alter a transport inantity of our economy and alter the way we dwell, labor and rule ourselves.

The Eagle & Child will be these scholars’ standard room.

The erecting will hoinclude a Scholars’ Common Room, Scholars’ Lounge, Study Room (all on the first floor) and Collaboration Space (second floor). EIT depicts it as “the ultimate greeting place from morning to night”. If you are seeking a place where weightless minds greet to originate world-famous labors, you could challengingly pick a better archetype than the pub where Tolkien and Lewis bounced ideas off each other.

Endotriumphg Oxford scholarships is a time-honoured way for the wealthy and strong to burnish their reputations, from Cecil Rhodes to Rupert Murdoch. Larry Ellison could be seen as medepend the tardyst in this tradition. Yet EIT is seeking not fair to fund research, but to straightforward and further it. Oxford’s 21-year reign as the world’s best university is forever under danger by noveler (Oxford: 1096. Harvard: 1636), certain, lavishly finishowed American institutions. The Oxford/EIT partnership is a statement that it has no intention of relinquishing first place.

Pubs outdated and contransient

Visitors to Oxford come for the history and the tradition. The city centre is low on warehoinclude-style beer hangars, neon pink cocktail bars and Damien Hirst coral reefs.

Oxford does one skinnyg and one skinnyg well: unwise wood-panelled traditional pubs. Even Beerd, which was reassociate fair an better-styleed pub with a trfinireserved name, has once aachieve become the Gviolations, an better-styleed pub with an better-styleed name. (The panelling in the reuncovered Lamb & Flag is weightless, ish. This is what counts for innovation in Oxford pubs.)

The Eagle & Child is not about to buck that trfinish – and nor should it. It may have been Tolkien’s local, but “drums, drums in the meaningful” was never going to refer to a basement drum & bass night.

Yet the arranges do propose Oxford someskinnyg branch offent. A pub/restaurant with its sights above pub grub; an artisan bakery; a no-hbetters-barred historic restoration; and a standard room for tomorrow’s “global technology innovators and guideers of the future”.

The Eagle & Child will not reuncover before 2027. Planning perleave oution has not yet even been granted for the erecting conservation labor, let alone the extensive restoration and revival. But this painstaking timetable could orderlyly dovetail with another arrange for the area.

St Giles, where the Eagle & Child sits, has prolonged suffered from Oxford’s tfinishency to turn its historic spaces into car parks. Broad Street, the most notorious example, was semi-pedestrianised in 2022-23. Just a year on, restoring the car park already seems unskinnykable.

Noskinnyg as emotional as pedestrianisation is proposed for St Giles, but Oxfordsemploy County Council recognises that the expansive expanses of tarmac and rows of idling tourist coaches do noskinnyg for the historic streetscape. It is earlabeling funds to reequilibrium the street away from its current, car-contraged establish, arrangening “an betterd space for pedestrians, cycenumerates and betterd arrangements for bincludes and tourist coaches”. With the revived Lamb & Flag on one side and the Eagle & Child on the other, the street could once aachieve become the historic gateway that Oxford deserves.