Last year it was purchased by Foundation Inns, who applied for planning permission to renovate it.  The plans can be seen by visiting the Vale of White Horse District Council’s Planning permission web site and entering reference number as 08/00939/FUL

Work has been proceeding over the last few months, including demolition company, electricians and plasterers, and skip loads of junk were appearing outside.  A week or so ago, work stopped.

Following various rumours going around town ranging from ‘its going to be demolished’ to ‘its turning into a wine bar’ and speculation of it getting mixed up with the Old Gaol development, none of which matched up with what Foundation Inns is all about, or what the planning permission application stated.   So I wrote an email to the directors of Foundation Inns to try to get more information.

I received two replies, one from Gavin Drew the Commercial & Finance Director, and another from Ian Grundy the managing director.   These replies say that work is now complete on making the building structurally safe, but due to the current market situation the plans need to be scaled down a bit, so requires re-applying for planning permission.  It should open this summer or autumn and will be a traditional pub with real ales and reasonably priced food.   The full replies are at the end of this article.

I think this will be a very good thing for Abingdon if it goes to plan.  It is in a touristy part of town, has a nice courtyard/beer garden.  It is one of the few pubs in Abingdon that is not controlled by Greene King (the others being the Stocks Bar and the Nags head).   Prior to its closure it was falling into disrepair and was not attractive to tourists.  I have watched several times as tourists walked up East Saint Helens street, admired the architecture and history of the building, wandered in and immediately came back out again.

Here are the actual responses I received from Foundation Inns:

Gavin Drew wrote:

Steven….

Thank you for your interest in the Kings Head and Bell.

We can confirm that we are looking to develop the site in the near future but will probably scale down the development against the approved plans given current market conditions. However, we are confident that we will establish a premises that Abingdon can be proud of.

Cask ales will be part of the offer along with a good selection of other product ranges and we will be introducing a good food offering at reasonable prices.

We have to go back through listed building / planning consents so is difficult to predict when the works may start/finish but ideally we are looking to late Summer/Autumn if all goes well with planning etc.

Thank you once again for your interest and we look forward to welcoming you as a customer when we re-open.

Many thanks – Gavin.

Gavin Drew
Commercial & Finance Director

Ian Grundy replied with:

Dear Mr Green
We have now completed phase 1 of the project to re-instate the Kings Head and Bell as a fantastic traditional pub. This involved replacing many of the central supporting beams, which had disintegrated to such an extent that 2 had completely broken, causing considerable movement, and for the building to be considered unsafe.

This now being completed the building is again safe and ready for the trading areas to be developed back to a level that we can be proud of. We met with our designers, QS etc at the site on Monday, and subject agreement with planning and listed buildings, we hope to commence work within the next 6 – 10 weeks and to open Autumn / early winter this year.

Yes – real ale will be an important part of our offering.

Hope this is the information you were looking for and I look forward to seeing you when we open

Kindest regards

Ian

Ian Grundy

I like pubs where I can take my children and hang out for a few hours in the afternoon drinking real ale in a friendly environment and possibly enjoy some snacks or food.

So it comes as a bit of a surprise to read today on the BBC news website that Wetherspoons are discouraging children from their pubs by only allowing people to have two drinks in a pub if accompanied by children. Also see Stonch’s beer blog for more on this and my comment on BBC Have Your Say. I will be avoiding Wetherspoons pubs from now on even though they are generally good for real ales.

Another thing that annoys me is how difficult it is to get any food in town centre pubs at certain times of day, especially in the evenings.

The pub should be a social place where the whole family is welcome during the daytime. That is the only way you will get more middle class non-smokers to spend more time there and spend more money. If pubs continue to behave like they did before the smoking ban, discourage children and not have any real ale (preferably from local breweries) and not serve affordable bar food throughout the day, then of course they will lose customers.

Another thing I don’t understand is why pubs don’t have a more varied selection of bottled beers. It is fair enough that the cellars can only handle a limited number of draft beers, but bottles can be easily purchased and put in the cabinets behind the bar. Instead the only beers you normally see in pubs are just bottled versions of the same mass produced lagers that you get everywhere. Even when you see some Belgium beers they are normally the same readily available ones such as Leffe and Duvel, and you hardly ever see anything unusual such as a seasonal porter or selection of beers from local breweries.

If pubs do not go out of their way to encourage new customers, make them welcome and provide something you can’t get at home, then you can not expect new customers to magically appear. When you can buy a better selection of bottled beers in the supermarket and sit at home with friends then why go out to a pub that makes you feel unwelcome, only serves one beer, plays annoying music, fills every wall with TV screens showing football and makes you feel like a nuisance if you try to order food.

The Punch Bowl staff and landlady were friendly and welcoming as usual. In addition they offered free turkey and cranberry rolls, and warm mince pies to all the customers. The Morland Original I drank was in good condition and well served.

The Anchor was next… we were greeted in a friendly manner. Even though this is also a Green King pub, they try to have a good selection of the guest beers that Green King supply. We chose the Abbot Reserve, which being rather strong we only drank halves. I remembered this beer from the Anchor Beer Festival a couple of months ago and was eager to try it again and I was not disappointed.

The Brewery Tap near the entrance to where the old Morland brewery used to be before it was converted into flats is also a Green King pub. But similar to the Anchor they always have a good selection of GK guest beers. We ordered the Hardy and Hansons bitter which I have enjoyed there many times before. For some reason after the first sip, we did not enjoy the taste and thought it was a bit sour and must have gone off (bottom of the barrel?). We mentioned this to the barman, who called over the manager. The manager tried some himself and assured us that nothing was wrong with it. As we took some more mouthfuls, it started to taste better. I think that what happened was that our palettes were conditioned from the Abbot Reserve we had recently drank making the H&H fruity hops taste more pronounced. This is excellent customer service because even though we were wrong about the beer being off, we were treated with respect and offered replacements (which we declined as we realised that the H&H was actually all right). Generally the Brewery Tap always have their beers in excellent condition and served at the right temperature.

Finally we went to the Stocks Bar at the Crown and Thistle. Normally they have four real ales available including Wychwood and Brakspear beers, but unfortunately they only had one beer on that day. The bar maid gave a good explanation as to why this was. The one beer that was available was Old Peculiar, which we enjoyed a couple of pints of. The only problem is that the beer is served a bit too cold (though I have heard rumours that the cellars are being modified to remedy this soon). This is not a big problem.. just let it warm up a bit in your glass before drinking it. We were served our beer in handled glasses. Even though they were quite difficult for the bar maid to reach, she was cheerful and friendly. It is details like this that make good customer service.

So top marks to all of these four pubs. My Danish companions were very happy and impressed with the English pubs and beer.

There is no recipe to speak of… basically I made some dried wine yeast (10 teaspoons) into a starter with a little brown sugar boiled in water and cooled. Pitched it into the apple juice in the containers I collected the juice in (food grade 5 gallon plastic). The next day it was fermenting out of the top and all over the floor… so I took it outside for a few days until it had calmed down.

Today (about three weeks after it started), I transferred one of the containers into a Hambleton Bard plastic pressure barrel. While I was at it, I measured the brix reading. According to my calculations this gave it a final gravity of 0.996, which is less than 1. I thought that was impossible. Water has a reading of 1.0000. So I also measured it with my hydrometer and came up with the same answer. I then tested my hydrometer in water and that measured 1 as expected.

If this is correct then this would mean all the sugar has been fermented out, and it would have an alcohol by volume of 9%. Tasting it, it still has a lot of sweetness, and it has not finished fermenting (gas was still being produced in the fermenter).

How can it possibly have a gravity of less than one, and still taste sweet and be fermenting?

It tastes quite nice.. a bit of sweetness, but also that real cider bite to it. It doesn’t have a lot of that sulphor smell and taste that cider often has when it is young. Last year it took several months to become drinkable.

Maybe someone else wants to check my calculations:

Original Brix was 16.2%, which equates to about 1067 gravity. Other members of the brew group got similar readings.

Brix today is 5.7%, and a hydrometer reading is 0.996.

This gives me an abw of 7.3% and abv of 9.1%.

There must be some other explanation for both the refractometer and hydrometer readings to come back with such a silly value.

My comment is that I am worried that now the moral brigade have been succesful making smoking in public places socially unacceptable that alcohol will be their next target.

We already have the situation where many areas of town centers are alcohol free. In Oxford most of the city center and some of the parks are already like this. The purpose of this was to try to get the homeless drunks and beggars to move out of the center to make it nicer for other people, but in reality it just pushed them further out into other parts of town, thus doing nothing about the core problem (alcoholism and homelessness). Instead it punishes us ordinary people who are not allowed to wander around a pictuoresque town and have a little picnic in a park, accompanied by a bottle of wine or beer.

The point of the charity lobbying to make it illegal for children to have any alcohol at home is to try and stem the problem of teenage binge drinking. However, this solution again does not fix the core problem and instead penalises the ordinary person.

When I was young we used to have a glass of diluted wine with our Sunday dinner… we did not turn into teenage alcoholics. Instead it made us aware about alcohol at an early age, so that when we were legally allowed to drink at 18, we didn’t feel the need to rush out and start binge drinking. Teenagers are still going to go out and obtain alcohol somehow, but outside of the security of their own home and family.

I understand that in America where the legal age is 21, it is worse, with probably most students breaking the law while at college. When ordinary people end up breaking the law doing things that the majority of people would think morally acceptable, then you lose respect for the law and start breaking other laws, relying on your moral instinct instead of the actual law.

There are many other situations where the remedy for a problem has been to punish ordinary people without helping at all to cure the real problem, examples are:

• Speed Cameras: It is not a careful person driving at 38mph in a 30mph area with good visibility that kills people… Careful drivers will slow down if they see a potential hazard, or the road conditions require it. The killers are the boy racers, teenagers who steal cars, tired drivers, drunk drivers and generally people driving without due care and attention.
• Metal barriers on footpaths: I think these are there to prevent motorcyclists from going down alleyways and footpaths… but all it really does is make it difficult for people with bicycles, prams, wheelchairs, luggage. I am often tempted to carry a hacksaw and chop these things down. The real solution would be better signposting followed up with random covert monitoring with serious on the spot fines for motorcyclists caught doing it. After a few well publicised cases of people getting fined and their motorbike confiscated it should remove the problem.

Anyway… where was I. About alcohol becoming socially unacceptable… Drink driving attitudes have changed a lot over the last 5 years or so. Many people now take the attitude of not driving after ANY drink. This means that many country pubs have either closed down, or turned into restaurants. In reality, drinking a small amount within a certain timescale, is going to have less affect than driving tired or under stress.

To summarize… while I appreciate that binge drinking and alcoholism is a bad thing, I do not think that banning children being able to be given a glass of diluted wine at home is going to do anything about the problem, and is likely to make it more likely that teenagers will drink illegally outside the home and become binge drinkers when they reach 18.