The imminent closure of the Gloucester Arms prompts CHRIS KOENIG to reflect on Oxford's oldest pubs

There is nothing deader than a closed pub, I used to think; unless it was the last remains of that vanished bird, the dodo, displayed in the University Museum, Oxford.

Now I know I was wrong. An extinct pub, closed for ever, perhaps with shutters placed over its windows like coins in the eyes of a Victorian corpse, is really as dead as the dodo. Far, far deader than those pubs you used to come across, hungry and thirsty, between opening times during the days of the old licensing laws.

And now I am told that every day a pub landlord somewhere in England is calling "Time" for the last time, and tolling the final bell.

Oxford has had its fair share of closures too, with 25 out of 150 disappearing in the last ten years, according to the Campaign for Real Ale. Latest to announce plans for imminent extinction is the Gloucester Arms, long fondly known as the Glock, in Friar's Entry.

It was one of the five pubs that used to help quench the thirst of the cattle drovers attending the regular markets held at Gloucester Green between 1835 and 1932.

Opened in 1825 it also did well out of the fair that was annually held on the Green on May 3 between 1783 and 1915.

But many will remember it as the luvvies' pub, frequented by actors from the nearby theatres, some of whom would hurry in and down pints between acts, sometimes still wearing their costumes.

Among those who signed pictures of themselves for the publican to hang on the taproom wall were Wilfred Pickles, Dame Sybil Thorndyke and Robertson Hare. Latterly, the pub has become the haunt of bikers.

Other Oxford pubs to have died out recently include The Horse and Jockey in Woodstock Road, so-called because it became the headquarters of the stewards of the horse race meetings that used to be held on Port Meadow between 1630 and 1880; the Wharf, situated on a sort of peninsular at the junction of busy Speedwell and Thames Streets, which, until the wharf was filled in during the 1840s, served dock workers; the Fox and Hounds in Abingdon Road, a mock Tudor building designed by J.R.Wilkins in 1926; and The Elm Tree on Cowley Road, designed by H.T. Hare, who also designed Oxford's Town Hall.

Hilaire Belloc famously wrote: "When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, you have seen the last of England," but I cannot imagine he ever thought that pubs would ever disappear at the rate they are going now.

Not that closing down pubs are anything new in Oxford; but it does seem that the cause of their closure, namely lack of custom (except in the town centre on Saturday nights), is new.

There was no lack of custom for instance at the Swyndlestock Tavern, which once stood on the corner of St Aldates and Queen Street on the evening of Tuesday, February 10, 1355, when drinking students got into a fight with townsmen after throwing a quart of wine over the landlord, John Croydon.

That scuffle led to the St Scholastica Day town and gown riots that left about 40 scholars dead. The mayor and bailiffs were, following those riots, ordered to attend a mass for the souls of the dead each St Scholastica's day and to swear to uphold the University's privileges, paying a 1d fine for each member of the Council. The ceremony only came to an end in 1825.

Other pubs of yore include The Catherine Wheel, built in the 15th century in Magdalen Street, where Catholic conspirators were captured in 1589; and The Crown at 3 Cornmarket Street (not the present Crown), where Shakespeare stayed on his journeys between Stratford and London.