Henry Taunt 100
Imagine, if you can, a world before mass tourism and before the internal combustion engine. A world where the summers were languid and the air smelt sweet. A world devoid of selfie sticks. ‘Those ancient courts and quadrangles and cloisters ... CONTINUE READING
St Frideswide’s Door
The great architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner had little time for St Frideswide’s Church in Osney. ‘Violently high Victorian’ was his verdict; an example of architectural ‘ruthlessness’, with its ‘very low octagonal central tower’ and ‘stunted north transept … squeezed in between ... CONTINUE READING
Sunnyside Up
In the summer of 1885 James Augustus Henry Murray, the self-educated son of a Scottish clothier, moved into Sunnyside, a large, redbrick villa on the Banbury Road – number 78 to be precise. There, in the garden, he erected a ... CONTINUE READING
Gargoyles and Grotesques
Wherever you go they stare down at you, their beady eyes fixed, their gaze immovable, a sinister smirk on their stony lips. Some of the characters they depict are mythic; some are based on real people. The oldest date back to ... CONTINUE READING
Cherwell Boathouse
The punting station beside the Cherwell Boathouse has a very different personality from its two bigger siblings downstream – at Magdalen and Folly Bridge. It’s altogether harder to locate for a start – tucked away since 1904 at the end of ... CONTINUE READING
Greenheart
Solstice Greetings! We dedicate this Midsummer posting to Port Meadow, at the green heart of Oxford: a never-ending source of wonder and inspiration. Twenty images by some of Oxford’s finest photographers. ... CONTINUE READING
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 ... 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 ... 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