Phoenix Picturehouse
One of Britain's oldest cinemas, tucked into Jericho with genuinely interesting programming and a friendly upstairs bar.
One of Britain's oldest cinemas, tucked into Jericho with genuinely interesting programming and a friendly upstairs bar.
When we fancy a proper night out rather than another quiet evening by the cottage fire, the Phoenix is usually where we end up. It opened on Walton Street in 1913 as the North Oxford Kinema, which makes it one of the oldest continuously running cinemas in the country, and it has been showing films from the same building for well over a century. It became the first venue in the Picturehouse group back in 1989, and although the chain has grown considerably since, this original still feels like the independent it started out as. Two screens, a friendly upstairs bar and a programme that assumes you are interested in more than the week's biggest release: that is the Phoenix in a sentence.
The programming is the real draw. Alongside the new independent and international releases you will find restored classics, themed seasons, live-streamed opera and theatre, and previews with a director or critic on stage afterwards. It is the kind of place where you might catch a foreign-language film you would never have found on your own one week and a beloved back-catalogue title the next. We tend to book ahead for anything with a Q&A, since those sell out, but a midweek early screening is often quiet enough to walk up on the night. Because the two auditoria are small, there genuinely is not a bad seat in either one, and the whole place feels a world away from an out-of-town multiplex.
Half the pleasure is the neighbourhood. Jericho is Oxford's most walkable quarter, a grid of Victorian terraces, canal-side paths, good bookshops and independent cafés a short stroll from the city centre. We like to arrive early, park up and wander Walton Street before the film: there are plenty of places to eat within a couple of minutes of the door, from proper Italian to no-nonsense pizza. The upstairs bar inside the cinema itself pours wine, spirits and bottled beer, so if you would rather keep things simple you can settle in there before the lights go down or linger over a drink once the credits roll and talk the film over.
A film at the Phoenix slots neatly into a day in the city rather than replacing one. We will often spend the afternoon among the colleges, markets and museums of Oxford, eat somewhere in town, and finish with an early-evening screening before driving home. If the Phoenix is booked out or nothing takes your fancy, The Ultimate Picture Palace across the city is the other great independent screen to know. For dinner before or after, Quod Restaurant & Bar on the High Street is a dependable choice, and our wider guide to things to do in the area has plenty more to fill an Oxford day around your booking.
“We always check the Phoenix listings before heading into Oxford. It is the programming that keeps us coming back, and there is nowhere better to end a day in the city than in one of those two little screens.”
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.