So long Barry Allday and The Goldfish Bowl
This Friday The Goldfish Bowl on Magdalen Road closes the doors into its watery world of fantastic aquatic creatures for the last time. An institution that has thrilled generations of…
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Looking for Beaumont Palace
I am standing at the top of a ladder in the garden of a house in Beaumont Buildings, a quiet street of pretty, terraced townhouses hidden away just north of Oxford’s central bus station. Built in 1826 – there’s a date stone set into its chequerboarded brick frontage – this was part of the new residential development that included St John Street, Beaumont Street and parts of Gloucester Green to help alleviate the surge in the city’s population in the early years of the 19th century. But I was here to look at something a lot older.
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Buckland and his bear
In the summer of 1847, Frank Buckland attended a party held by the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Oxford’s Botanic Garden, a stone’s throw from where he…
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Three year anniversary
On one of those blisteringly hot days we have had recently when the summer air is suffused with heat, I head downstream along the river from Folly Bridge in search of a secluded watery spot to cool down. I am not normally a wild swimmer, but I’d been tipped off by a kind reader that such a place was to be found this way, a couple of miles along the towpath. Through clouds of meadowsweet mixed with cornflowers and purple knapweed, past Iffley Lock, and under Kennington Railway Bridge. An eyot called Rose Island – on which stands a lovely privately owned residence, accessible only by foot over a narrow, wooden, arched bridge.
