The present Mason’s Arms in Quarry School Place (whose address was 2 School Place until 1955) was built in the early twentieth century on the site of an earlier thatched beerhouse understood to date from 1760. Raphael Samuel describes it as “the most plebeian of the village pubs”.

The original beerhouse (to 1901)

It seems very likely that Charles Hedges, who kept a beerhouse in Quarry from at least 1851 to 1857, was the landlord at this beerhouse. On 27 June 1857 Jackson's Oxford Journal reported:

Charles Hedges, a beer-house keeper, at Headington Quarry, was fined 20s., including costs, for keeping his house open for the sale of beer after ten o'clock on the 12th inst. He pleaded, in mitigation, that it was the pay night for the haymakers of one of the farmers there. The defendant was ordered to pay the money in a fortnight, or a distress would issue.

By 1859 the landlord was Nathaniel Rivers. Jackson's Oxford Journal of 12 February 1859 reporting on the Bullingdon Division Petty Sessions and County Hall a week earlier, stated that “Nathaniel Rivers, beer-house keeper, of Headington Quarry, was summoned for keeping his house open late on Saturday night, the 29th of January, but this being a first offence, he was forgiven on payment of cost of summons.” It seems very likely that the beerhouse in question was the original Mason's Arms.

In July 1867 the Mason's Arms was put up for sale by auction, along with a cottage on the site and seven adjacent cottages, all owned by William John Richards, a bookseller at 104 High Street.. The advertisement stated: “This Property is held in perpetuity, on payment of a peppercorn if demanded, so that it is equal in value to Freehold.”

Rivers remained the tenant landlord, and on 2 May 1863 he was convicted at the Petty Sessions for having five incorrect pint measures in his possession, and on 5 November 1864 with keeping the pub open for the sale of beer between 3 and 5pm on Sunday evening after being charged by P.C. Stephen Hall Sutton. .

A forthcoming auction of this pub was advertised thus in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 5 October 1867:

The Public House and 1 Cottage, in the occupation of Mr. Rivers and Mr. Pritchard, are situated in a large enclosed Garden, from which a good quantity of valuable stones may be obtained, and the 7 Cottages and Gardens are adjacent thereto, in the occupations of Mrs. Snow and others.—This Property is held in perpetuity, on payment of a peppercorn if demanded, so that it is equal in value to Freehold.

On 2 January 1869 Rivers was charged by P.C. Sutton again for “keeping his house open for the sale of beer before 12.30 on Sunday the 27th ult. At eleven o'clock that morning three men were smoking there, and beer was in two cups.”

The first directory to name the beerhouse as the Mason’s Arms is Shrimpton’s Oxford Directory of 1875. It is probably named after the Mason’s Pit that stood behind it. It is also named in this report in Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 24 July 1875:

At the Bullingdon District Petty Sessions in the County Hall, Oxford on 14 July 1877,  Henry Messenger was imprisoned for three weeks with hard labour for assaulting the landlady Charlotte Rivers:

Nathaniel and Charlotte Rivers remained in charge of the pub until their retirement in the early 1880s. Charlotte died at the age of 58 and was buried at Holy Trinity churchyard on 24 January 1885. Raphael Samuel writes that “Natty” Rivers was remembered in his retirement as a “very old” man in a little cottage near the bottom of the Mason’s Pit; but in fact he was only 68 when he died on 23 October 1894. He was buried in Holy Trinity churchyard two days later.

Raphael Samuel writes that at the end of the nineteenth century the Mason's Arms had “a fish-and-chip shop housed in a shed at the back, a sweet shop in the middle, and a one-room parlour in the front (if it were a summer day there might be a game of Aunt Sally in the garden”.

The present pub building (dating from c.1909)

The Mason's Arms was now owned by Hall’s Oxford Brewery Ltd, whose sign can be seen in the photograph below:

This photograph was supplied by the Mason's Arms (Twitter: @TheMasonsArmsHQ)

In 1926 Hall's Oxford Brewery Ltd was acquired with 300 tied houses by Allsopp & Sons Ltd.

In his reminiscences of C. S. Lewis, the Vicar says that he and his brother well known at the Mason's Arms, the nearest pub to the church.

The Mason's Arms is now a free house. It brews its own beer, and holds the Headington Beer Festival each September.

On Boxing Day huge crowds gather here for the morris men’s mummers’ play, St George and the Dragon. The photograph below was taken in 2007: see the video from that year (Vimeo login required).