Oxenham & Leigh Coffee

Purveyors of Fine Coffee. Resealable bags of freshly ground coffee or whole beans

Welcome to Oxenham & Leigh Coffee (formerly Oxenham & Leigh Coffee House

The name Oxenham & leigh was created using the surnames of the main characters, John Oxenham and Amyas Leigh from the 1855 novel ‘Westward Ho! ’ written by Charles Kingsley, who used ‘The Little White Town’ of Bideford for inspiration. Westward Ho! Became a popular North Devon seaside resort.

Coffee has been popular for centuries, and is consumed around the world. One of the first English coffee houses opened in Oxford in 1652 and soon there were coffee houses in every town. Popular with academics and creative thinkers they were often called ‘Penny Universities’ (a penny being th price of a cup of coffee). Maritime insurers and merchants would meet in Edward Lloyd’s coffee house, which eventually became Lloyd’s of London, the best known insurance company in the world.