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 Market Street. The air is marginally warmer inside than out, thanks to a scattering of electric bar ... CONTINUE READING
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 no accompanying photographs, so we've added some present-day images of similar artistic merit ... This is what ... CONTINUE READING
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 ‘Westgate Oxford’ as it now styles itself, that we could be more or less anywhere. The website ... CONTINUE READING
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 the planet (and doubtless home to a copy of the Guinness Book of Records in which such ... CONTINUE READING
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 once strolled here on their way to Port Meadow and Wolvercote, discussing Logic and Epistemology as they ... CONTINUE READING
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 16 James Street, a round trip of over a hundred miles. He was also good with his ... CONTINUE READING
