This pit was outside the Six Bells pub.

Raphael Samuel wrote in Village Life and Labour (1976):

The pit outside the “Six Bells” (“the big pit”) served Quarry in some sense as its village green. It was here that the morris men danced on Whit Tuesday, that the drum and fife band assembled on club days and Hospital Sunday; and that the annual sheep roast was held in November, the furance being built up from the bottom of the pit “and … protected from the wind by an oblong tent”. In early Victorian times it had been an arena for village sports. “I myself remember – seeing Cock Chasing in the pit at the Six Bells”, writes Vallis in his memoir. “Men could be seen running after these birds with their hands tied behind them trying to catch them with their mouth.”

This photograph of the Headington Quarry Sheep Roast of 1899 probably shows this pit.

Quarry children enjoyed playing hide-and-seek (which they called “high hirkey”) in this pit in c.1900.