THE future of a Headington pub that has been put up for sale will be settled in the next few weeks.

Enterprise Inns put the Fairview Inn up for sale earlier this year.

Fleurets – the property company marketing the building – has now set an October 11 deadline for commercial bids, after the local community did not make an offer to take the Fairview over.

Oxford City Council designated the Glebelands pub as a community asset on July 16 after residents launched a campaign to save it.

The residents then had six weeks to submit a notification that they wished to become a preferred bidder.

But this did not happen, and so the pub is now available to buy on the open market again after residents were unable to raise the £385,000 needed to buy it.

Manager Glyn Millard said: “I don’t know anything. Enterprise Inns doesn’t inform me about it – I just keep running the pub.

“There have not been many viewings. I had two yesterday, which were the first since May.

“I will be running the pub until something happens. It is still open and it is still running.”

Fleurets has also revealed Enterprise Inns would be willing to pay £2,000 towards a buyer’s legal costs if the sale is completed by December 13.

Dene Road resident Fred Ellis said: “The only thing I go there for is the community meetings they have there which the councillors hold.

“The main thing about it is what it would become if it did close down.

“In some cases they knock them down and build Tescos but I don’t think that will happen here.

“It is off a main road and the problem is you have got to walk some way to get there.”

The Fairview Inn was built by Reading-based brewers H & G Simonds and opened in 1959.

Even though the pub only dates back to the 1950s, the Campaign for Real Ale considers it to be historically important.

It is listed on the Campaign for Real Ale’s national inventory of historic pub interiors as having “wonderful” full-height wall panelling.

CAMRA in Oxford also has concerns about the future of the Quarry Gate pub in Wharton Road, Headington.

The pub, which closed three years ago, has been sold to Rugby-based Seville Developments and the company has not yet revealed its plans.

The sale of the Quarry Gate follows the closure of the nearby Crown and Thistle in January last year after Greene King said it was unviable.

Other watering holes closed in recent years include the Fox and Hounds in Abingdon Road, the Chester Arms in Iffley Fields and the George Inn in Botley Road.