The Turf Tavern

The hardest pub in Oxford to find and the most rewarding to stumble on — low beams, three courtyards and a stretch of the medieval city wall.

You reach the Turf down St Helens Passage, an alley off New College Lane so narrow that people walk under the Bridge of Sighs without noticing it. The alley was once called Hell Passage, which tells you what the area was for. The pub grew up just outside the line of the old city wall, deliberately beyond the jurisdiction of the colleges — which is precisely why undergraduates drank here, and still do. A section of the medieval wall forms one edge of the courtyards. Its sign advertises 1381. The pub itself opened around the end of the eighteenth century, under the name The Spotted Cow; the older date belongs to the ground rather than the business. It is low-beamed, largely outdoors across three small courtyards, and reliably full.