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Home > Oxfordshire > Nuneham Courteney > Harcourt Arms

Harcourt Arms

Picture source: Sue McArdle


 
The Harcourt Arms was situated on the A4074. This grade-II listed pub was previously known as The New Inn and is now used as a Chinese restaurant.
 
The restaurant has now also closed.
Iain Jones (October 2020)
 
Nuneham was built by 1 st Earl Harcourt to house estate workers. It consists of blocks of two or three small two-story cottages lining both sides of the A7074, plus a large inn. Most if not all of the cottages are now freehold with the estate owned by Oxford University. The inn has tried pretty much everything to survive of the years, brief successes, but ultimately no local or passing trade defeated it.This already very large H shaped pub had a dining room and kitchen added, I had several meals there in the early 1990s. It was then converted to a hotel. Low trade seems to have coursed it to be put on the market, by 2009 it had become the Cockadoo restaurant. Cockadoo closed in February 2020. It’s been quietly rotting ever since.
David Gormley (September 2025)
 

 
Listed building details:
Inn. Mid C18, altered and extended mid C19. Brick in Flemish bond with some flared headers; old plain-tile roof with brick stacks. H-plan. 2 storeys plus attic. Front in chequer brick with stepped plinth, storey band and dentil eaves course, has projecting wings and a 4-window central range with 2 leaded cross windows at ground floor and 2-light casements at first floor. Wings have similar windows set towards their inner corners, blind at first floor, and their inward-facing return walls also have a first floor-casement. All have segmental arches. The left bay of the main range has an entrance with architrave, flat canopy on shaped brackets, and rectangular overlight, and the right inner angle has a large glazed wooden porch with Doric columns. Roofs are hipped with 2 hipped roof dormers in the central range. 3-window right return wall has been extended by one bay and has some mid C19 rubbed-brick flat arches. It retains a cross window to extreme left. Left return wall also has some rubbed-brick flat arches. The building forms the northern termination to the village street, balancing the former smithy (Brewers of Nuneham Ltd., q.v.). Part of the estate village built c.1760 for the 1st Earl Harcourt.
 

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Other Photos

Picture source: David Gormley