The North Star
The North Star is one of the most iconic pubs in the country. It's one of a handful left that does not have a bar, dispensing beer directly from the tap room... No cellar or beer pumps needed! It probably started life as a blacksmiths with a license to sell beer.
As the inn sign suggests, it is named after a Brunel locomotive which was used on the London to Bristol line when it opened. A reconstructed North Star is now in the Museum of the Great Western Railway, Swindon
Present day pub run by 'H'.
The Cox family has run the pub since 1842. The 1901 census shows Mr Cox as blacksmith and beer retailer; as does an 1887 business directory. By 1911 his widow, Elizabeth, is shown as an Innkeeper. Her teenaged daughters Amy and Ella took on the pub and were followed by Ella’s son Jack. This account is slightly confused by an entry in an 1854 business directory showing James Greenaway of the North Star as a ‘beer retailer and coal merchant’ and in 1856 he was convicted of misconduct in his house and was fined £3 13s 6d – about £3 67p.
Jack was a larger-than-life character and a steam enthusiast who organized coach parties from the pub to the annual Dorset Steam Rally. He also had the pub sign repainted to show the engine, one of the first broad gauge engines used by the GWR.
The pub has been used for inquests – including in 1888 into the ‘death by natural causes’ of three-month-old Frank Wise – and by many village organizations. In 1927 there was a ‘pig club’ here, one assumes a very happy pig! And villagers still remember calling in for sweets, and sometimes cigarettes on their way to the school bus.
Jack and Peggy Cox
Wantage Brewing Co. owned the North Star until 1920 when Morland and Co of Abingdon took it over. Following the death of Jack’s widow, Peggy, Morland sold the pub to local farmer Robert Tyrrell, a relative of the Cox family. He ensured the pub’s worldwide fame when on New Year’s Day 2003 he 'accidently' drove his JCB into the pub, demolishing one end of the building.... Don't worry it's been repaired!
New Years Day 2003
