Walking through the front door of Frederick Tranter, tobacconist on the High Street of Oxford, you get the immediate impression that you have stepped back in time. Tins of tobacco and leather bound briar pipes in glass cabinets line the walls and a smell which reminds you of Grandfather pervades the air.
It’s a place which sells other stuff too; all manner of materials which self respecting gentleman would demand, from Dalvey hip flasks to snuff, to wallets, tankards, yards of ale, pocket watches, more obviously I suppose to pipes, snuff, cigarettes, tobacco and cigars. You could purchase items in here which would make a simple shave unbeatable.
This place gives one of those narrow glimpses of what Oxford used to be and should be fought to retain by everyone who cares about the place, it’s reassuring. I know that sounds a little dramatic, but the shop is situated in a quiet strip of shops on the High Street, a street recognised these days predominantly for bus smoke, but once you are within, it smells of all those heartening things which appeal to the decent human within us all.
John, or one of the other staff there, don’t refer to customers, they talk about “friends”, for whom they hand blend a variety of tobacco, something that even Dunhill have stopped doing. Professor’s mixture simply reeks of Oxford. They can also sell you a hand rolled Opus X Dominican double corona cigar for something in excess of thirty pounds. There is a mind blowing selection of snuff and tobacco mix lining one wall, so that whatever your taste, literally anything from winter berries, butterscotch to Autumn leaves, you can quite literally put it in your pipe and smoke it.
This is a place where people fight the Nanny state, it’s a place where the staff can still smoke pipes, a place where people question whether the new Sherlock Holmes film will depict a man smoking a pipe and whether he’d be allowed to smoke it indoors?
Now, I am not a smoker, but I came away with such a reassuring feeling that England does still exist that I shall rack my brains of how to use the shop for any time I have to buy my male friends a present, in fact with Sherlock Holmes making a reappearance, I may even take up the pipe, just for an excuse to use Frederick Tranter!
