The Fleur de Lys (Morland)
Main Road, East Hagbourne, Didcot.

    * IPA £2.00
    * Abbot Ale £2.40
    * Dry Blackthorn cider £2.20
    * alcopops £2.40

    * Main courses £5.95-6.95, desserts £3.50

    * Aunt Sally

Christian Walker writes:
The Fleur de Lys is a "Morlands" pub, but still does decent Morlands even 
after the Greene King annexement. It's a friendly pub that's well known 
for its food, so there's a mix of locals and people who come from a bit 
further away. Lots of pictures of fish, a few stuffed trout etc. An 
episode of Doctor Who was filmed there in the 70s! (iii.2000)

Owen Massey expands:
East Hagbourne is a village just outside Didcot which is under threat of 
being smothered and becoming Greater Didcot. At the moment it remains a 
Best Kept Village with tidy lanes and thatched cottages.

The Fleur de Lys is a black-and-white painted building which extends 
further back than you might think from the road (it also has a fair-sized 
car park). There is a beer garden, which was closed when we visited due to 
being waterlogged (unless it was literally a garden of beer). There are 
prize catches of fish on the walls, none of which turned out to be a Big 
Mouth Billy Bass in disguise. Curiously the fish theme is not carried 
through to the menu.

The pub closes in the afternoons, but on a Sunday it was crowded both with 
lunching Didcoteers and apparent locals. David Gray was playing subaudibly 
on the speakers. The service was friendly and quick, both at the bar and 
at the table where we ate. Food is a typical pub-lunch range: steak, 
scampi, sausage.

This might not be an exceptional pub, but it's definitely good. It's also 
the only pub in a terribly pretty village. Most of those in nearby Didcot 
are just terrible.

It's also worth adding that the reason for our visit was a homage to the 
location where the Tom Baker Doctor Who story Android Invasion was filmed. 
There is a large cross at each end of the village, the Lower Cross 
doubling as the war memorial; the one to which the Doctor was tied is the 
Upper Cross by the church. The pub features in the story under its real 
name and the staff seem surprisingly welcoming to Who trippers, perhaps 
because they sell prints behind the bar. These show the Doctor on the 
cross with the pub behind in a composition which I don't think can be 
achieved in reality. The buildings of the National Radiological Protection 
Board at Harwell were also used in filming but you would have less fun 
spending a sunny Sunday there. (4.iii.2001)