• At the Rumble Museum

    Today I am heading east, up Headington Hill to visit Oxford’s Rumble Museum. I’m intrigued for I had not heard the name before. Yet the place has secured accredited status from Arts Council England on an equal footing with the most famous museums in the city. The Ashmolean may have opened in 1682, is Britain’s oldest public museum and the worlds earliest attached to a university, but the Rumble Museum at Cheney School is the first and currently the only one to be housed in a UK state school.

    January 31, 2026
    General

  • The Levellers last stand

    It is early September in 1649. The feelings amongst the rank and file of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army stationed in Oxford are running high. It is now nine months since King Charles I was executed, and the promise of a more equal and tolerant society that some expected, has not been forthcoming. This is especially true for a group of highly organised agitators in the army nicknamed the Levellers.

    January 24, 2026
    In memoriam

  • Sarah Cooper and her jars of sunshine

    One of the regular activities that perks me up as I claw my way through dull grey January is marmalade making. A couple of weeks into the New Year, crates of the bitter Seville oranges needed in its production (smaller and more pitted than their sweeter counterparts) being to appear in the shops. They are available for a short period only, a couple of weeks if you are lucky. So as Oxford is a city of marmalade eaters you must be quick to secure your basketful of Spanish sunshine, sufficient to fill enough jars to last a good way into the coming year.

    January 17, 2026
    Trade and Industry

  • At the Elijah Terrace with Cordelia

    Just before Christmas I get a call from my friend Cordelia. She asks if I’d be interested in meeting her by what is affectionately known as the Elijah Terrace on Walton Well Road just north of Jericho. For she wants to explore the story of the Old Testament prophet as told in the magnificent stone carvings that decorate in exquisite detail the lunettes above nine of the first-floor windows here. It is from these that this row of houses has derived its nickname. 

    January 10, 2026
    Angels & other flying things, Builders and buildings, Trade and Industry

  • Elizabeth Jennings Way

    It was on the way to have lunch with a friend last week in Summertown that I first encounter the name Elizabeth Jennings. I’d decided to take the scenic route north out of the city along the Oxford Canal. Starting at Hythe Bridge, over Isis Lock, under Walton Well, Aristotle Lane and Frenchay Road Bridges, and then just at the point at which I need to peel off to reach my destination there it is; Elizabeth Jennings Way Bridge, the painted words on the arches of its underbelly part of a fun folk-artsy mural portraying the story of the neighbourhood.

    January 3, 2026
    Books and book folk