Round Hill, Port Meadow
On frosty winter days or in the lengthening evenings of May its profile can be picked out easily if you know where to look. On a grey morning with angled light it melts mysteriously into the surrounding grassland. Four thousand years haven’t quite ... CONTINUE READING
Cuckoos and Blackbirds
There’s something unmistakably romantic about Cuckoo Lane – and not just the name. Perhaps it’s because it seems to emerge from such a completely unremarkable place – a residential cul-de-sac – before it begins its snickety ascent of Headington Hill. Perhaps ... CONTINUE READING
Shuffle
On 28 March 1913 a car was built which was destined to change the course of history. Its name was the Morris Oxford, its badge an ox fording the Isis. 109 years later we bring you the new-look Morris Oxford website. ... CONTINUE READING
Ox-Bridged
Last month we posted a photographic essay featuring ten of Oxford's historic bridges. Here's the full Story: There’s really only one place to start: Grandpont. Big bridge. The name says it all. The giant blocks of corallian ragstone which underpin it were ... CONTINUE READING
Oxford Abridged
Oxford is a very watery place: encircled by rivers, criss-crossed by streams, perennially flood-prone. Its location has been defined by water, its destiny shaped by it. This is the (beginning of the) Story of Oxford in ten crossings – an abridged history you ... CONTINUE READING
New Year Quiz 2022
Happy New Year – and Welcome to the Morris Oxford Quiz 2022. It’s time to dust off the cobwebs and reactivate the neurones! How well do you know Oxford? Here are 10 questions to test your local knowledge. ... CONTINUE READING
Feedback 2021
Yuletide Greetings! We’re fast approaching Morris Oxford’s third Christmas: a time for celebration, commemoration, consumption – and possibly even combustion. Before we finally ring out the old and bring in the new, let’s take a moment to reflect on the extraordinary year ... CONTINUE READING
Guy Fawkes’ Lantern
The British don’t go in much for dates and anniversaries. We’ve heard of 1066 – and of course 1966; but who can name the feasts of St George or St Andrew, still less the actual day when the battle of Hastings ... CONTINUE READING
Balloon Madness
Early on the morning of 4 October 1784 a thirty-one-year-old pastry cook by the name of James Sadler took off close to Merton Field in a hot-air balloon. ‘I perceived no Inconvenience,’ he later commented, ‘and being disengaged from all terrestrial ... CONTINUE READING
Brasenose Lane
The rain in Brasenose Lane still goes – mainly – down the drain. The difference is that this particular gutter is in the middle of the road rather than cambered to either side. The technical term for it is a ‘kennel’. ... CONTINUE READING
The Gaffer’s Desk
Welcome, booklovers, to the inner sanctum! Basil Blackwell’s very own office. The room the ‘Gaffer’ (1889-1984) made his home for so many years. The hub, the heart, the epicentre of a book business that grew to be one of the biggest ... CONTINUE READING
Rivers Run
Last month’s Story about the Trout Inn prompted a flurry of peacock-, beer-, and river-related reminiscence – including this lyrical passage: And once we rowed together up the river To many-gated Godstow, where the stream Splits, and upon a tongue of land there stands An ... CONTINUE READING