The Morris Oxford eMini-History of Oxford
The Morris Oxford Mini-History of Oxford is OUT NOW as an eBook Click Here The paperback is still available too. Onward and Oxford! Morris Oxford is a 100% non-profit organisation. All sales proceeds go to the ... CONTINUE READING
Ox Photo
A year ago, on the centenary of his departure to the great darkroom in the sky, we published a Story in honour of Henry Taunt (1842-1922). Author of richly illustrated guidebooks and publisher of countless picture postcards, he was, without doubt, ... CONTINUE READING
Treacle Well
There are certain, special places where the modern world feels very far away. As you pass through the wooden gate into St Margaret’s churchyard, Binsey, the relentless thrum of the ring road seems to recede into the distance, and time starts ... CONTINUE READING
The Beaches of Oxford
It’s always worth reminding oneself of the benefits of a philosophical education. Parson’s Pleasure is a secluded stretch of grass embankment leading down to the River Cherwell at the point, just before you reach the land known as Mesopotamia, where the ... CONTINUE READING
Folly Island
This is the remarkable story of an island that shrunk. Every Oxfordian knows where it’s located but only a few can tell you what goes on there, let alone how it got to be so small. First, the name. Why is ... CONTINUE READING
The Lincoln Imp(s)
It's amazing what you can see in Oxford if you look up. A globe bobbling over the dome of the Radcliffe Observatory. A giant figure staring out across the roof of Blackwell’s Art and Poster shop. Tiny people ... CONTINUE READING
Oxford and Stratford
With perfect patriotic symmetry, William Shakespeare, England’s greatest playwright, was born and died on the same day: St George's, 23 April (1564 -1616). The first folio of his collected dramatic works, published four hundred years ago in 1623, is visitable at ... CONTINUE READING
21 today
A lot has happened in Oxford on 21 March over the years: Colin Dexter, creator of the opera-, beer-, and jaguar-loving Inspector Morse, died on 21 March 2017, aged 87. There are no fewer than fifteen black-and-white photographs of his detective ... CONTINUE READING
Saints Daze
Oxford boasts a rich assortment of saintly associations – not least the former Cardinal, John Henry Newman, canonised as recently as 2019. His bust sits on a quiet plinth in the garden of Trinity College, greening serenely with age. Some ... CONTINUE READING
Monawar Hussain
Monawar Hussain isn’t your typical Eton tutor. And he certainly isn’t your typical Oxfordshire High Sheriff. But then, not much is typical about the Imam from East Oxford. The Hussain family first came to Oxford in 1985, from Maidenhead – and ... CONTINUE READING
Feedback 2022
We’re fast approaching 2023, and all the excitements of a New Year. Before we finally ring out the old, however, let’s take a moment to reflect on the extraordinary year that was 2022. Click on the images below to reveal the Stories behind ... CONTINUE READING
‘Tis the Season!
Online Onward and Oxford! Morris Oxford is a 100% non-profit organisation. All sales proceeds go to the Morris Oxford Verdant Green Fund – ‘Dedicated to the beautification of our brilliant city through the planting of trees and wildflowers.’ ... CONTINUE READING
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
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 ... CONTINUE READING
Peacocks and Trout
Quick! Out of the car park (thank goodness it’s too difficult for coaches to get here), across the narrow road (eyes right for the even narrower medieval bridge), through the porch (note the Stonesfield slate roof), over the flagstones (part of the ... CONTINUE READING
Crotch Crescent
You don’t have to be in the back seat of the car playing ‘I Spy’ to find yourself screaming out the names of certain Oxford road signs. Of all the streets in our fair city none quite matches Crotch Crescent. Squitchey ... CONTINUE READING
Godstow
Once upon a time there were three abbeys in Oxford: Godstow, Osney, and Rewley. Along came King Henry VIII. Then there were none. All that remains of Rewley Abbey (founded by Cistercian monks at the end of the thirteenth century) is ... CONTINUE READING
The Morris Oxford Mini-History of Oxford
The clocks have gone forward – and there’s a full moon tonight. What’s more ... The Morris Oxford Mini-History of Oxford is published TODAY It’s concise. It’s historical. It’s about Oxford. ‘Absolutely brilliant.’ ‘Wow! I never knew that.’ ‘Without doubt my book of ... CONTINUE READING
John Bigg’s Other Shoe
This month’s story was supposed to have been about the ruined abbey of Godstow, but the response to Bradshaw’s Hat has been so rich and so interesting that we feel compelled to postpone the Dissolution for a while. Martin Sheppard, distinguished publisher of ... CONTINUE READING
Bradshaw’s Hat
At two o’clock on the bitterly cold afternoon of Saturday 30 January 1649, King Charles I stepped out from the balcony of the Banqueting House, Whitehall, and onto the executioner’s scaffold … A few minutes later, the masked axeman held up ... CONTINUE READING
THE MORRIS OXFORD NEW YEAR QUIZ 2021
Happy New Year – and Welcome to the Morris Oxford Quiz 2021. It's time to dust off the cobwebs and reactivate the neurones! How well do you know Oxford? Here are a dozen questions to test your local knowledge. ... CONTINUE READING
A Solstice Recount
And so the world turns, the days begin to lengthen, and the door creaks open towards a new year … Talking of doors, several dedicated readers of Morris Oxford were puzzled that the recent Counting Down post didn't have the door numbers arranged in ... CONTINUE READING
Covered Market
Tis the season! Time to deck the halls, fill the mead cup, drain the barrel, and troll the ancient yuletide carol. Time also for a long overdue visit to Oxford’s Covered Market. For maximum impact make your approach via the Turl and ... CONTINUE READING
Counting down
The Morris Oxford Countdown to Christmas begins today ... Visit out Instagram page (@morrisoxfordmorrisoxford) to see the scores on the doors.
Bonn Bones
How many people today have heard of the Tirah Expedition? Or could even say where Tirah was/is? So much for remembrance … The answer is that Tirah is a mountain region at the North West Frontier of what was once British ... CONTINUE READING
A Little More Allotment
Mrs Thatcher was not a friend of allotments, despite (or perhaps because of) being a grocer’s daughter from the famously potato-growing county of Lincolnshire. In July 1980 her government attempted to repeal Section 8 of the 1925 Act. Had she succeeded ... CONTINUE READING
Allotments
The Right Worshipful Lord Mayor of Oxford, Mrs E F M Standingford, couldn’t quite believe her eyes as she stepped decorously through the gates of Osney, St Thomas and New Botley allotments, one warm August afternoon in 1986. Patiently waiting for her ... CONTINUE READING
Swing Bridge
Once it was pivotal. Now, ivy-clad and rusting, it tells of an era long since past. Yet still it retains a grandeur and a fascination, like the mouldering carcass of some giant metal dinosaur. It’s a railway swing bridge. It dates ... CONTINUE READING
A River Runs Through It
Running through every story on this website is a silver thread: the river which has shaped Oxford’s destiny, indeed the very reason for Oxford’s existence. The water even takes on a different name as it flows here, turning briefly from Thames to ... CONTINUE READING
Lockdown
We have just witnessed something unprecedented in the history of Oxford: EMPTY STREETS. The photographs below were recorded by Stephen Foote – a professional cameraman, Oxford born and bred – over the course of two April days in 2020. ... CONTINUE READING
JR
We received a number of disturbing reports following our most recent posting on Microbes and Medicine. Dr John Radcliffe appeared to have fallen on his side, his magnificent statue having, for some unfathomable computerish reason, rotated 90° to the left. We ... CONTINUE READING
Microbes and Medicine
Reserve Police Constable Albert Alexander was in a very bad way. His face was horribly swollen and covered in abscesses, his breathing was short, and he was displaying all the symptoms of acute sepsis. The situation was so serious that surgeons at ... CONTINUE READING
Feedback
Morris Oxford is a year old today: Morris Oxford the website that is. Morris Oxford the car first rolled off the production line over a century ago, in 1913. Both are works of devotion and local pride. One was a business which went ... CONTINUE READING
Radcliffe Observatory
Thomas Hornsby, the Savilian Professor of Astronomy, was lying on his sick-bed in the Radcliffe Infirmary when he observed a small black disk transiting the face of the sun. It was the planet Venus. The year was 1769. This was a rare ... CONTINUE READING
The Trap Grounds
As you wind across the boardwalk through the shoulder-high reeds, with a soft grey cygnet quietly lapping beside you, you might well be forgiven for thinking you are in some enchanted rainforest. It is hard to imagine that this land was ... CONTINUE READING
Castle Mound
Of all the many wonderful (and often true) stories about Oxford none is more magical or dramatic than the tale of Lady Matilda and her escape from the Tower. Matilda (1102-1167) was daughter of King Henry I of England. When her ... CONTINUE READING
Turl Street Kitchen
Not many loos these days are spanned by vaulted ceilings built of centuries-old stone and brick. Even rarer is it, on a call of nature, to encounter blackened mediaeval timbers and joists, let alone to discover a lavatory with a collection ... CONTINUE READING
Paradise Paved
We had such a powerful response to our recent Westgate Story that we were prompted to dig back further into the Morris Oxford archives. Once the dust had settled, we came across the piece below. Alas – or perhaps mercifully – there were ... CONTINUE READING
Westgate
Yes, it’s clean. Yes, it has lots of shops. Yes, it’s more spacious, more airy, altogether less horrid then its concrete predecessor. But we can’t help feeling as we walk off the street, through the gaping entrance to the Westgate Centre, or ... CONTINUE READING
Park Town Arch
In his article on ‘The Expansion of Towns - Planned and Unplanned' [Journal of the Town Planning Institute, 43 (1957), p.106] D.W. Riley identifies certain towns as possessing 'an efficiency, culture, and charm which are the gradually matured expression of generations of ... CONTINUE READING
Flying Over Wolvercote
The members of Oxford Model Flying Club (which celebrated its half-century in 2019) consider Port Meadow to be one of their most important and highly prized gathering places. These aren’t people playing with annoying drones. They are cognoscenti, devoted to lovingly ... CONTINUE READING
Beaumont Palace
Pull aside the Springtime foliage which will have grown over it, and there, on the corner of Beaumont Street opposite Worcester College, on a stone pillar beside the iron garden railings, you will find a plaque bearing this inscription: NEAR TO THIS ... CONTINUE READING
Canalboats
Stretched out along the canal they lie, from Wolvercote to Hythe Bridge, in every shade and hue, from psychedelic hippy swirls, via sensible dark-blue college livery, to load-bearing gunmetal greys and rusty blacks. And it’s not just the canalboats themselves which fascinate. ... CONTINUE READING
Einstein’s Blackboard
If you like astrolabes, Oxford is the place for you. There are 170 of them in the History of Science Museum. And not just astrolabes. There are also (according to Christopher and Edward Hibbert’s magisterial Encyclopædia of Oxford) ‘armillary spheres, orreries, globes, ... CONTINUE READING
Binsey Poplars
The thatched cottages of the picture-postcard village of Binsey lie little more than a mile from the railway station. Its farm, Medley Manor, is a pick-your-own cornucopia. Its twelfth-century church protects a holy well dedicated to Frideswide, Oxford’s patron saint. And its ... CONTINUE READING
Shark!
Residents of the quiet, well ordered and perfectly sensible thoroughfare that is New High Street, Headington, might have been surprised as they pulled back their bedroom curtains on the morning of 9 August 1986. Protruding out of the roof of Number 2, ... CONTINUE READING
Martyrs’ Cross
Far at the end of the long sweep of St Giles, dark and pointedly brooding (some say it resembles the needling spire of a subterranean church) lurks the Martyrs’ Memorial, one of Oxford’s best-known monuments. It is a grim reminder of ... CONTINUE READING
The Norrington Room
When you cross the threshold into the Norrington Room of Blackwell’s bookshop, you are entering world record territory. Surrounding you are nearly three miles of shelves, and on those shelves are over 150,000 books. This is officially the biggest bookselling room on ... CONTINUE READING
Aristotle Bridge
There may not be a Plato Place or Socrates Street in Oxford; but how many towns outside Greece can boast an Aristotle Bridge? No one knows for sure how the name came about, but it's not unreasonable to speculate that Philosophy dons ... CONTINUE READING
Morris Oxford
It was hardly a surprise when, in 1892, fifteen-year-old William Morris secured his first job at a bicycle repair shop. He was a passionate cyclist who thought nothing of pedalling to Birmingham and back in a day, from the family house in ... CONTINUE READING