A night walk in old Oxford

It’s at this time of year, after the clocks have gone back, and the evenings draw closer, that I like to don my coat and scarf and set off for a night walk around the streets of old Oxford. Once the day trippers have gone, the students are safely ensconced in their college rooms and the kebab vans have shut up shop, I can often find myself on my own, the velvety darkness shot through with shafts of muted streetlight. When the moon is full, or the turrets and towers are swathed in mist it is especially atmospheric. But for me whatever the conditions, to saunter at night through the cobbled squares and streets, down the ancient alleyways, past the aged walls of the medieval buildings will always remain mysterious and beautiful.

It is on these walks that I find it not at all surprising that so many writers of fantasy fiction have come from within the city. As Philip Pullman, for whom Oxford stands as a central character in ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy, once wrote, “I put it down to the mists from the river which have a kind of solvent effect on reality. A city…. where the Magdalen gargoyles climb down at night and fight with those from New College or catch a fish under a bridge is a place where likelihood evaporates. A place where past and present jostle each other on the pavement.”

Most certainly. It is not hard to imagine those bearded philosopher heads outside the Sheldonian in heated discussions after the witching hour, or the playful grotesques laughing as you turn your back. They and the hundreds of other stone statues, muses, virtues, kings, queens and beasts of all incarnations, whose gaze follows you everywhere, peering down from on high and from every corner. Curious but harmless spirits having fun while most slumber. I am after all just another nighttime wanderer come to bathe in their thousand-year-old history.

Occasionally I will spot a late-night reveller bottle still in hand, swaying back to their lodgings with the inbuilt wiring of a homing pigeon; an intimate couple oblivious to everything and promising themselves to each other, at least until the following morning; I once spied a bunch of rowdy drinkers all dressed as Father Christmas heading into Queens College in the early hours. And this year there are the Deliveroo drivers bombing through the backstreets on bikes to unburden themselves of somebody’s midnight feast. But generally, it’s still just me; me and the ghosts of Oxford town. And I like it that way.

We have the Oxford Civic Society to thank for the saving of the old Windsor style lights so much part of any night walk in Oxford. During the 1970’s there was lighting anarchy, the council selling off the old lanterns at £7 a pop, stringing up all manner of incongruous illuminations in the process.  I was alerted to this by local historian Liz Woolley, who has written about it here on page 39

The article is full of memorable information including the fact that the last gas light in Oxford, in New College Lane wasn’t switched off until April 1979. The wrought iron wall brackets for the replica lanterns were designed by Robert Maccoun, an American engineer who repaired boats for a living from one of the old Oxford College barges. He and the eminent philosopher Derek Parfit fought hard to keep the historic appearance of old Oxford intact, the first of Maccoun’s lamp brackets going up at the front of Parfit’s college, All Souls. They are now to be seen all over the city centre. They certainly lend an air of mystery to the photographs below I have taken while out and about in the late and early hours on my old iPhone.