A Short History of Oxford Coffee Houses and Student Life

As in London’s coffee houses, where sections of society gravitated to their own particular establishment, in Oxford each college had its meeting place. Among them:

A significant coffee house was opened by Arthur Tillyard in 1655. Tillyard's was the meeting place of the Oxford Chemical Club, a group of leading scientists , including Sir Robert Boyle, and their students.

From this Club the Royal Society would emerge.

The City Council and the University authorities kept a sharp eye on these establishments. In these dens of caffein-fuelled iniquity political ideas were openly discussed, newspapers freely available and the class status of the male coffee drinkers was irrelevant.  Talk was the thing!

At last there was somewhere where students could escape the stultifying atmosphere of University life, a place where they could indulge in inter-departmental gossip and exchange ideas on educational and political reform.

Regular publications such as political pamphlets and  radical newspapers were the lifeblood of the coffee houses. The proprietors ordered these publications for their clients’ free perusal, and coffee house gossip and scandal provided hot topics for the same publications, many of which were anti-Government and anti-University. No wonder the powers-that-be were worried...

In 1711 the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford banned the sale of The Medley and in 1720 Terrae Filius, both publications being critical of the University.

The Oxford University Authorities were concerned not only with matters of radical thinking. Many Oxford coffee houses had been granted licenses to sell wine and the drunken behaviour of students was of concern.

In an attempt to limit student freedom, Proctors and Magistrates were urged by the University to visit coffee houses and urge proprietors not to allow students to build up loans, not to serve students after 11:00 at night and not to open on Sundays until 5:00.

 Whether such attempts at control were totally successful is unclear. What is clear is students who drank wine in coffee houses often spilled out onto the streets of Oxford causing mayhem! 

Tom’s Coffee House in the High Street was known for its back room, nicknamed The House of Lords. It was furnished with Chippendale chairs reserved for senior members of the University and similar high-ranking officials.

Despite (or maybe because of) its distinguished clientele in the back, the Vice-Chancellor was informed that morally suspect literature with dubious illustrations was freely available to students in the front.

At a coffee house opened in 1728 by a Henry Biggs in St Clements, the drunken Biggs entertained students with the favours of his wife and sister, both of ‘a loose life’. It was apparently for this reason that students frequented the house.  Not the coffee.

Soon the stimulation of coffee and political debate - that explosive combination - began to take a nosedive.   The reasons?  Here are just a few:

• The East India Company began to import tea from China and India - coffee prices became inflated.
• Tea houses serving food became popular.
• Circulating libraries took over the provision of books and free newspapers.
• Newspapers employed professional correspondents rather than relying on coffee house gossip.

The Oxford coffee houses, stimulating islands of intellectual ferment and lively debauchery, were coming to an end and are hardly remembered today for the remarkable institutions they once were. They served Oxford students well.   

Arguably nothing quite like them exists today.

Sources:

• Oxford Coffee Houses, 1651-1800 by Norma Aubertin-Potter and Alyx Bennett (Hapden Press, 1987)
• PopularArticles.com History of Coffee: Part II - Spread of Coffee to Europe
• The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug By Bennett Alan Weinberg, Bonnie K. Bealer (Routledge (12 Sep 2002))