The Baskerville’s name hails from the 18th century and involves a mysterious estate named Crowsley Park which is situated three miles from our pub. The former owners of the park were the Baskerville family, one of whose members, Henry Baskerville, was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1847. Stories about the family and its association with fierce dogs were among the inspirations for Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles in which ‘Sir Henry Baskerville’ is a leading character.

The connection with the Baskervilles is preserved in statues of ‘hell hounds’ with spears through their mouths which sit on the stone gateposts at the entrance to the park and atop the front of Crowsley Park House. You can find the very same depiction of a hound with a spear through its mouth crowning our coat of arms hanging at the Baskerville.