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Turf Tavern

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Turf Tavern in Oxford, England
Turf Tavern in Oxford, England

The Turf Tavern (or just "the Turf") is a historic pub in central Oxford, England. Its foundations and use as a malt house and drinking tavern date back to 1381. The low-beamed front bar area was put in place sometime in the 17th century. It was originally called the Spotted Cow but the name was changed in 1842, likely as part of an effort to extinguish its reputation as a venue for illegal gambling activities.The pub is frequented primarily by university students (of both Oxford University and Oxford Brookes University). It is located at the end of a narrow winding alley, St Helens Passage (originally Hell's passage), between Holywell Street and New College Lane, near the Bridge of Sighs. Running along one side of the pub is one of the remaining sections of the old city wall. Due to the illegal activities of many of its original patrons, the Turf sprang up in an area just outside the city wall in order to escape the jurisdiction of the governing bodies of the local colleges.The Turf Tavern is also where future Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke set a Guinness World Record for consuming a yard glass of ale in 11 seconds in 1954. Other public figures who have dined or drunk at the tavern include Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Tony Blair, CS Lewis, Stephen Hawking and Margaret Thatcher. It also served as a hangout for the cast and crew of the Harry Potter movies while the nearby colleges were used as locations throughout the filming of the series. The Turf Tavern also claims to be the location where future American president Bill Clinton, while a student at University College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, famously smoked "but did not inhale" marijuana.It was also featured in the ITV TV Series Inspector Morse aired between 1987 and 2000.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Turf Tavern (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Turf Tavern
Bath Place, Oxford City Centre

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N 51.7547 ° E -1.253 °
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Turf Tavern

Bath Place 4-5
OX1 3SU Oxford, City Centre
England, United Kingdom
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Greene King

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greeneking-pubs.co.uk

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Turf Tavern in Oxford, England
Turf Tavern in Oxford, England
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All Souls College Library
All Souls College Library

All Souls College Library, known until 2020 as the Codrington Library, is an academic library in the city of Oxford, England. It is the library of All Souls College, a graduate constituent college of the University of Oxford. The library in its current form was endowed by Christopher Codrington (1668–1710), a fellow of the college who amassed his fortune through his sugar plantation in the West Indies which was worked by enslaved people of African descent. Codrington bequeathed books worth £6,000, in addition to £10,000 in currency (the equivalent of approximately £1.2 million in modern terms). The library, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, begun in 1716, was completed in 1751 and has been in continuous use by scholars since then. It is Grade I listed on the National Heritage List for England.The modern collection comprises some 185,000 items, about a third of which were produced before 1800. The library's collections are particularly strong in Law, European History, Ecclesiastical History, Military History, and Classics. There is an expanding collection devoted to sociological topics and the History of Science. Unusually for an Oxford college library, access to the Codrington is open to all members of the university (subject to registration). The library contains a significant collection of manuscripts and early printed books, and attracts scholars from around the world. The first woman to be admitted as a reader to the library was Cornelia Sorabji from Somerville College, at the invitation of Sir William Anson, 3rd Baronet in 1890.In November 2020, the college took the decision to stop referring to the library as the Codrington Library, as part of a set of "steps to address the problematic nature of the Codrington legacy", which derives from exploitation of slave plantations.