French feast for the nobs at Woolies (From The Oxford Times)

French feast for the nobs at Woolies

9:13am Wednesday 9th December 2009 in Leisure By Chris Koenig

Misty eyed, we all remember the demise of dear old Woolies, RIP, in November last year. But the opening of its store at 52-53 Cornmarket, with its giant pick ’n’ mix sweet counter, its mezzanine cafeteria, its tea at 6d (two and a half ‘new’ pence) a quarter pound, ladies’ nylons at 2/9d (or just under 14p), or pillow cases at 2s (10p), single sheets 6/6 (32.5p), is all but lost in the mists of time.

It opened to the public on Friday, October 18, 1957. On the day before, however, the great and the good of the city were summoned to a sumptuous luncheon, presumably in the aforementioned cafeteria, but with waiters in tails dancing attendence.

I know this because a be-tasselled menu has miraculously survived in this newspaper’s archives. In that age of post-war austerity, they drank Krug Champagne 1949, Macharnudo Fino sherry Chateau Kirwan 1945 or Meurault Charmes 1945, and Hines Grande Fine Champagne Cognac. They ate Les hors d’Ouvre des Gourmets, Le Homard Americaine, Le Faisandeau Roti and much more besides.

How the world has changed: in this age of television cooks constantly telling us about good British food, it is easy to forget that not long ago all fancy English restaurants wrote their menus in French — so convinced was the nation at large that its reputation for the worst food in Europe was well-earned.

But what was all that celebrating about? Also in the archives is a 12-page pull-out-and-keep supplement which appeared in the Oxford Mail on the day of the feasting. It explains that Oxford’s original city-centre Woolworth’s, across Cornmarket Street from the new one, stood on the site of the old Roebuck Hotel, a coaching inn in the 18th and 19th centuries. Woolworths bought and demolished it in 1922, opening for business on the site of the present Boots in 1925.

And the chain store did much the same again in 1939 when it bought another venerable old coaching inn, the Clarendon Hotel (formerly the Star Inn, where the exiled Louis XVIII of France stayed in 1808) — which it demolished in 1954, a victim of Supermac’s “wind of change”.

The gap between the dates of purchase and opening was not purely due to the war. It was also due to one of the bitterest planning battles Oxford has ever seen. Woolworth’s had applied to pull down the Clarendon Hotel, where many of Evelyn Waugh’s characters in Brideshead Revisited were wont to breakfast, and been refused permission.

It appealed to Harold Macmillan, then Minister of Housing and Local Government, who overturned the refusal. The store lasted until 1983 when it in turn was sold to a property company and demolished to make way for the garish Clarendon Centre, which stands there now — named after that 17th- century man of letters Lord Clarendon, who must be spinning in his grave.

The University, which had set itself against the notion of the city centre becoming “commercial”, was unamused by the decision of Mr Macmillan who, after all, was a former student of Balliol. Dons threatened to vote against his honorary doctorate — the offer of which was consequently dropped.

They forgave him later, though, when he became Chancellor of the University.

Sadly, the Clarendon Hotel was much older in parts than was suspected at the time. Its 12th-century vaulted cellar, still underneath Cornmarket, may have been responsible for the recent fiasco on the road’s surface when granite paving, imported from China, cracked and had to be removed by the council at high expense.

As for that feast, it is ironic that even the very word restaurant came into the English language from France after the revolution and that Chateau Kirwan is named after an Irish owner of the Chateau who was guillotined in 1797.

Was that a Donnish joke perhaps?