St Giles’ Fair
For 363 days of the year the road known simply as St Giles’ is the very essence of urban decorum, its stately boulevardian approach to the North Gate of Oxford fronted by grand buildings, framed by dappled plane trees, punctuated by ... CONTINUE READING
The Villages of Oxford
Imagine you could travel back in time. Back to before the Ring Road girdled us with its ceaseless, droning thrum. Back to before the car which spawned that road rolled off the production line at the mighty Morris motor works. Back ... CONTINUE READING
A Bridge Too Far
A while ago we posted a Story about the bridges of Oxford: an uncontentious piece – factual, historical in focus, mildly celebratory, polite. https://morrisoxford.co.uk/ox-bridged/ It prompted one reader to remind us that the Bailey Bridge over Port Meadow took less than ... CONTINUE READING
Museums of Oxford
Young Conservative, socialist worker, country gentleman, healthy snack, community policing, military intelligence, traffic improvement scheme, banking service … The list of Morris Oxford MOxymorons grows longer by the day. And to its ignoble ranks we were just about to add ‘museum ... CONTINUE READING
May Morn
May Day! May Day! Not a plea for emergency rescue: in Oxford it's a call to revelry and celebration, a summons from on high! As dawn breaks crowds begin to gather, many of them still reeling from the excitations of the ... CONTINUE READING
Dead Animals
John Copcot of The Queen’s College, Oxford, was wandering through Shotover Woods one fifteenth-century day when he heard a strange rustling in the undergrowth. He swung round and was horrified to behold a wild boar hurtling towards him. Armed only with ... CONTINUE READING
Hiding in Plain sight
Stephanie Jenkins set up her treasure trove of a website oxfordhistory.org.uk more than twenty years ago. It is spectacularly detailed, authoritative, and compendious – bursting with local riches. Her transcription of plaques, monuments, war memorials, documents, and signs of all kinds, is, ... CONTINUE READING
Commas, Apostrophe’s, and Mi sing Le ters
Spluttering over a split infinitive? Seething about a semi-colon? Literally reduced to gibbering paroxysms by misuse of the word ‘literally’? … Few debates are as incendiary as those to do with grammar and punctuation. Small wonder that Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots ... CONTINUE READING
Feedback 2024
And so we gear ourselves up for the excitements of a New Year. Before we finally ring out the old, however, let’s take a moment to reflect on the twelve months that made up 2024. Click on the images below to read the ... CONTINUE READING
Covered Market 250
And so the 250th anniversary year of the Covered Market draws to a close. What would John Gwynn have made of it, we wonder, as he put the final touches to his architectural designs over a quarter of a millennium ago? ... CONTINUE READING
Bear Inn Ties
The fashion for gentlemen’s neck-ties has waxed and waned over the years. We are currently living in an open-collared era; but it was not always thus. In 1952, Alan Course, landlord of The Bear Inn, decided (we suspect alcohol may have ... CONTINUE READING
Non Licet
We were privileged recently to be present at an event very few people in Oxford have ever witnessed: the opening of the Non-Licet Gate. The what? Stranger than cheese-rolling or bungee-jumping, rarer than a solar ... CONTINUE READING