The Red Lion (Gloucester Street)
Pub, bar and restaurant tucked behind George Street between the Oxford Playhouse and the New Theatre — one of the city's larger pub gardens for a sunny afternoon.
The Red Lion sits at 14 Gloucester Street, on the corner of Gloucester Green, in the block behind George Street between the Oxford Playhouse and the New Theatre. It's operated by Premium Country Pubs, the upper-tier brand within the Mitchells and Butlers group, and pitched as a pub-bar-restaurant rather than a pure drinking pub: full food menu, Sunday roasts, real ales and wines by the glass.
The location is the most useful thing about it. If you've got a curtain-up at one of the two theatres, this is the closest sit-down pub for a pre-show meal or a glass of wine, with the Gloucester Green market and bus station a minute away in the other direction.
What's it like
The interior runs across several connected rooms — leather banquettes, dark wood, a long bar — and the patio garden behind is genuinely one of the bigger pub gardens in central Oxford. In good weather it fills early. Pavement A-boards typically advertise the current promotion: when a guest photographed the corner in May 2026, the board was running Sparkling Fridays on prosecco and sparkling wine.
Visiting
The pub is reached on foot from Carfax in five minutes via Cornmarket and George Street, or directly off Gloucester Green from the bus station. There is no dedicated car park; the Worcester Street and Westgate car parks are the nearest. The kitchen runs through the day on a single menu rather than separate lunch and dinner services, which makes pre-theatre booking straightforward.
Address, telephone and opening hours from the Red Lion Oxford website. Operator (Premium Country Pubs) from the website footer. Photography by a guest, May 2026.
Nearby
Within a few minutes' walk
