Blue Boar Street is a narrow historic street running between St Aldate's to the west and the north of Alfred Street to the west, in central Oxford, England. It is located just north of Christ Church.
At the western end is the Museum of Oxford and the Town Hall to the north.
The Bear is a historic public house located on the north side of Blue Boar Street on the corner with Alfred Street. A unique feature is a large collection of short lengths of tie displayed on its walls and ceiling.
To the south is Christ Church, one of the largest Oxford colleges. Behind an old wall on Blue Boar Street are the modern 1960s buildings of the Blue Boar Quadrangle in the college, named after Blue Boar Street. In 2006, this was Grade II* listed.
The street was formerly known as Tresham('s) Lane. Blewebore Inn, once owned by King Henry III, was located here, hence the current name. The Blue Boar Inn was demolished in 1893 for the building of the Oxford Public Library, later the Museum of Oxford.
Famous quotes containing the words blue, boar and/or street:
“The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
“I would that the Boar without bristles had come from the West
And had rooted the sun and moon and stars out of the sky
And lay in the darkness, grunting, and turning to his rest.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The invention of photography provided a radically new picture-making process—a process based not on synthesis but on selection. The difference was a basic one. Paintings were made—constructed from a storehouse of traditional schemes and skills and attitudes—but photographs, as the man on the street put, were taken.”
—Jean Szarkowski (b. 1925)