The White Hart (Bass)
Wytham, near Oxford.

Monday to Saturday: 11.30am to 2.30pm, 6pm to 11pm
Sunday: 12pm to 3pm, 7pm to 10.30pm

    * Adnam's Broadside £2.00
    * Bowmore £1.97 (4.x.2000)

Wytham can be reached from Wolvercote or Botley. It is a small village at 
the foot of Wytham Hill (where it was once seriously suggested that this 
University be moved in the 1920s), and has an Abbey, a Park, a field 
station, a post office, a car park, a church, and the White Hart, which is 
the only house in the village not owned by the University.

A country pub set a good way back from the Seacourt stream, and pretty 
old-looking with it. The guest beers are reasonable enough in taste, 
though a bit expensive, and more or less identifiable blind as long as you 
ask the barman to remove the sparklers. The guests aren't as good as they 
are in the pubs that are used to retailing them, though, nor indeed as 
good as they used to be before Bass took over. Rather a disappointment in 
fact, but still better than the Trout (also Bass).

Note that the facilities (fifteen degrees, one of the few degrees left in 
Oxford), lie beyond the body of the kirk with a conservatory in the in 
between, with long tables and long benches in it. Good place for eating. 
They've installed a Martian to heat it.

Observe, up a few steps and overlooking the bar area, the Duke of 
Abingdon's Bar, gutted by fire and rebuilt in the 1980s in the style of an 
early episode of Ever Decreasing Circles. This has comfortable chairs, 
leaded windows, and a log fire.

The food serving part has traditional wooden chairs on a red-tiled floor. 
The food is good, filling, and a bit steep for a pub but cheap for a 
restaurant. (31.v.2000)

James Davey writes:
The White Hart lies beyond The Trout on the Godstow Road. I visited on a 
Sunday lunchtime in July and the place was, predictably enough, packed. 
The pub is a typical Cotswold country place, with stone walls, outhouses 
and lots of benches outside.

The food was excellent and very reasonably priced. there are two types of 
food available, meals cooked inside and an excellent range of things 
cooked on the barbecue (including veggie burgers and salmon burgers) We 
chose the latter. The service was quick and a self service salad was 
included. (As big as you like, excellent value - Ed.)

All in all well worth a visit at lunchtime.

Owen Massey adds:
We saw Lalla Ward there, who played Romana in Dr Who, but I don't think 
that's strictly relevant. (12.vi.1998)

Colin Batchelor thinks:
Isn't she married to Richard Dawkins? (1.vi.2000)