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 to before the first steam locomotive puffed into the first railway station at (Great) Western Rd. Back to before the canal sliced its way across the edge of Port Meadow, bringing coal, pottery, slate, and soot into the very heart of this place. Back to before the city boundaries were extended in 1899, and again (1929) and again (1957) and again (1991).
Back to a time when Oxford was modestly populated and clearly defined: enclosed within its protective medieval walls, encircled by rivers, enfolded by fields and meadows and marshes.
James Ward’s painting (1836) depicts the landscape as seen from Rose Hill, in all its bucolic gentleness. It was a vista described by one observer as among ‘the most beautiful views in the world’, not just because of its aspect onto the dreaming spires, but for the joy it brought ‘as one travelled along it between the meadows and cornfields’.
Animals of all sorts grazed contentedly in these lush pastures. There were human settlements too: villages and hamlets, each with its own church and proud sense of self. Close to, but not actually in, Oxford. Happily separate.
These are the places we now call ‘old’: Old Headington, Old Marston. Villages whose history is written in their simple Saxon names: ‘Ley’ meaning a field or clearing in the woods – Church Cowley, Temple Cowley, Iffley, Cherley (later renamed Littlemore). Watery places: ‘Ey’ meaning an island or islet – North and South Hinksey, Binsey.
And Wolvercote. There are no wolves there these days. Maybe there never were; but it’s a thought.
They’re all but lost now, these villages – submerged for ever when the modern city burst its banks and flooded out into the countryside. Thank heaven the churches still remain to bear witness to the time before. And the local inns, albeit much changed …
Very occasionally you catch a glimpse of the world before the tsunami: a thatched roof here, a piece of intricate woodwork there, lichen-covered stones traced with mason’s marks. The more surprising and incongruous these moments, the more precious they are. They need to be noted before they disappear.
So let’s register and celebrate these telling remnants while we still can – before they, too, vanish beneath the engulfing tide and are lost for ever.
Church and Temple Cowley – once two small and separate settlements far away from the walled town across the river. In 1801 their combined population was a mere 345. St Laurence’s, we are told, is the smallest parish church in Oxfordshire. Temple Cowley takes its name from a foundation of 1139 established at the behest of the crusading Knights Templar – aka the Brethren of the Knighthood of the Temple of Solomon of Jerusalem.
The Hinkseys, North and South – home to a manor house, a large pub (and larger garden). Four splendid thatched houses and a twelfth-century church with a preaching cross remain to show what would once have been. Between both settlements ran the Hinksey Stream, its soggy meadows rich with fritillaries. No need for grandiose flood alleviation schemes in those wise days when people understood the lie of the land and had space to adapt …
Headington Quarry – always a very different kind of place: an ever-shifting worksite, occupied by groups of itinerant labourers whose task was to hew stone from the ground in order to provide building materials for the University and, in turn, for the great houses of Old Headington: a habitation of ancient pedigree and status, far grander than the settlement down the hill, its expansive hilltop location once the site of a royal palace.
Iffley – its name is said to derive from a Saxon word meaning ‘meadow of gifts’. It boasts a world-famous Romanesque church, a handsome parsonage, an ancient yew tree, a cottage-lined pathway to the river, the first lock downstream from Oxford … and a hill – rare indeed in this part of the floodplain.
Littlemore – once the setting for a medieval Benedictine convent, and in Victorian times the home of John Henry Newman, Cardinal and (as of 2019) saint, who lived there as a monk prior to his Roman Catholic conversion. All that remains of the dissolved convent is a tumbledown pub called The Priory, which closed in 2013.
Marston – supposedly a contraction of ‘Marshtown’ – whose church tower was used as a look-out platform during the Civil War. The house where the treaty for the surrender of Oxford was negotiated in 1646 still sits at the heart of the village. Its summery pub overlooks what was once a ferry-crossing of the River Cherwell.
Wolvercote – listed in the Domesday Book as Ulfgarcote, and defined by its position on the edge of extensive common land. The canal and railway line may have bisected the ancient village but nothing can puncture the spirit of its proud Commoners who, for over a thousand years, have exercised their right to graze horses and cattle there and on the nearby expanse of …
Unploughed. Unharvested. Uninhabited – except by animals. Timeless. The one place that won’t ever be built on (we pray): Oxford’s last precious link with a green world that is disappearing all too fast.
Feedback
Stephanie Jenkins, perceptive as ever, makes the telling observation that all the village high streets had to be renamed once they became absorbed into suburbs. The change of nomenclature says it all:
In Kelly’s Directory of Oxford for 1930 (just after the big 1929 extension of Oxford’s city boundaries), the following high streets are listed under H:
High Street, Cowley (now Between Towns Road)
High Street, Headington Quarry (now Quarry High Street)
High Street, New Headington (now New High Street)
High Street, Old Headington (now Old High Street)
High Street, Wolvercote (now Godstow Road)There were also Church Streets that had to be renamed because of duplication.
This Story was written in the wake of a particularly lowering visit to Oxford North ‘Banalside’, followed by a tour of the grey bleakness that is ‘Barton Park’. Calling blocks of lumpen housing ‘Larch’ and ‘Willow’ doesn’t make them any less depressing. As for ‘Meadowsweet Way’ …
But it’s not all bad, as the following local champions point out:
Ian Baxter writes from Binsey:
Mercifully, Binsey hasn’t yet been smothered and submerged by the city, courtesy, thank the Lord, of the Thames and its flood plain. It is thus unique in having no modern development at all, beyond the cow sheds behind The Perch and my nearby house, the most recent houses (two semi-detached cottages) having been built at the beginning of the twentieth century, and all the houses bar one owned by Christ Church and well conserved. I think this uniqueness and difference needs reference in some way, and maybe your clarion call could specifically argue that ‘we must not lose this last one’.
This superb drawing (charcoal and chalk on vintage paper) entitled Walking to Binsey, autumn afternoon was sent to us by © Emma Coleman-Jones
Evelyn Sanderson writes from Iffley:
So many people just wish the inexorable march of ‘progress’ and the decline in our climate and natural world would stop … I think it is important to say that Iffley’s sense of place and its rural feel still just about survive, with four acres of unploughed meadow remaining in the village. Bordered by ancient drovers’ routes, locals and visitors flock here to walk the circular route around the lock, take in the views and birdsong, forage the hedgerow for blackberries and wild plums, and chat on the lanes. Thousands of people feel strongly enough to object to the plans to concrete them over: 60,000 on the petition and 1000 responses to the development proposal. Locals are now co-creating a plan for outdoor education here – a ‘Meadow School’ celebrating Oxfordshire’s defining landscape, where both children and nature can flourish.
Julian Munby draws our attention to these two nineteenth-century images of pastoral East Oxford. He writes:
One of my favourites is the painting by William Turner of Oxford (1789–1862): View looking over Cowley Marsh from Bullingdon Green, near Oxford.
A closer view is by Mackenzie & Le Keux: View of Oxford from the Henley Road [i.e. Iffley Road] It is dated 1837.
Learned guide and proud Quarryman, Maurice East, writes:
To get a sense of the industry which created Quarry I would first visit the nature reserve at Magdalen Quarry. This was the last working pit in Quarry, closing in 1949. The exposed walls give a sense of the scale of the excavations. But at one time the depth of the pit would have been much greater. This is the pit most likely to have provided the raw materials for the Divinity School designed by William Orchard, who has a Close named after him in Old Headington.
Next I would wander to the Masons Arms pub at the centre of the village. It sits among the hills, humps and hollows which tell the history of centuries of local quarrying. This is a throwback wet-sales boozer, where you can still hear the sound of Aunt Sally sticks on dolls during the summer and watch Morris Dancers and mummers on Boxing Day.
I would suggest that Barton village could also be included. Before the bypass bulldozed through the Fox pub – and other thatched cottages – Barton was intimately linked to Headington.
Chris Andrews (North Hinksey) writes:
One of the many things I like about living here is the fact I can walk my dogs out of the front door, past the pub (occasionally) and straight into well established, largely undisturbed countryside. Seacourt Stream and Hogacre ditch meander attractively though pasture and woodland, and, prior to Thames Water polluting the hell out of it, had a good head of fish including pike, chub, roach, crayfish. In the years that I have lived there I have seen swallows, swifts, house martins, barn owls, skylarks, reed warblers, sedge warblers, whitethroats, blackcaps, kites, buzzards (including a honey buzzard), sparrowhawks, kestrels, foxes, badgers, an otter, deer and any number more.
My enthusiasm is, however, tinged with sadness in the knowledge that the ill-advised and extremely costly ‘Flood Alleviation Scheme’ will destroy a lot of this natural resource while failing to do its job.
Mary Newton (Wolvercote) writes:
What about Elsfield? Please NO. But who can tell how far the lunacy will spread? Morris Oxford readers should be reminded that, within living memory, there were schemes to build a road through Otmoor, not to mention the infamous highway across Christ Church meadow.
If you really wish to see the world we have lost, with thatched roofs and stone shingles, wooden eaves and proper windows, and if you wish to have access to streams and fields and woods, Wytham is your best bet. But it is an anomaly – a village owned by a very rich man in the days before the Ring Road and the explosion of property prices.
Notwithstanding the changes brought about by modernity, there is one village of Oxford which has vanished completely and for ever. Julian Foxe writes:
Do Morris Oxford readers know about the deserted village of Seacourt, last occupied circa 1400 – so presumably abandoned following the Black Death? There’s a big vitrine dedicated to it in the Ashmoleon, and I have just located this link: https://oxoniensia.org/volumes/1961-2/biddle.pdf
Prompted by reading the Oxoniensia article, we wrote to the archaeologist who had led the original excavation, Professor Martin Biddle. He replied:
How good to hear from you! Seacourt is so far back in my past (I dug it in 1958 directly after coming out of the army) that, apart from writing it up, I’ve scarcely given it another thought.
However, there’s plenty of the Deserted Medieval Village still there, west and east of the line of the road, including, to the east, the site of the church which I would have loved to dig in 1958 but which was not then threatened and so could not be touched.
I wouldn’t mind having a trip out there again sometime, perhaps to lead an OUAS party one summer day.– MB
