Queen's Lane Coffee House

English coffee house

Queen's Lane Coffee House is a historic coffee house established by Cirques Jobson, a Levantine Jew from Syria.^[1] Dating back to 1654, it is the oldest continually serving coffee house in Europe,^[2]^[3] but it has only been on the present site (Oxford, England) since 1970.^[4] The building in which it operates is a Grade II listed building.^[4] It was in this coffee house that Jeremy Bentham found out what Utilitarianism is. ^[5]

In 2009, it rebranded itself as "QL". There is a second, smaller, QL Café. Another Café QL (now called Café Bonjour) in Headington was once owned by the same family but was sold years ago.

The café has been owned by the same family since 1983.

References

^ "Personalities of the exclusion period". Oxford Jewish Heritage. Archived from the original on 10 May 2022. Retrieved 12 September 2020.
^ "Oxford's Oldest Coffee Houses". Love British History. 19 January 2022. Archived from the original on 13 August 2022. Retrieved 6 May 2023.
^ Keown, Callum (1 December 2017). "Europe's oldest coffee house bounces back after being slammed by hygiene inspectors". Oxford Mail. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
^ ^a ^b Jenkins, Stephanie. "Oxford History: The High: 39, 40, & 41: Queen's Lane Coffee House". Oxford History. Archived from the original on 3 August 2021. Retrieved 12 September 2020.
^ Bentham, Jeremy (1829) Article on utilitarianism: long version, in Amnon Goldworth (ed.) Deontology Together with a Table of the Springs of Action and Article on Utilitarianism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, pp. 291-292.