A spicy mix of Oxford stories from a house once belonging to a city sausage maker.
I have long been enchanted by Cecily Peele’s “MAP OF OXFORD’S HISTORY; WITH SOME OF HER WORTHIES”, (above) published in the 1930’s. A cursory glance at this funny, colourful pictorial…
We have the Reverend Carteret Fletcher to thank for saving Carfax Tower. Since the 13th century, this landmark building has stood at Oxford’s central crossroads, themselves the final confluence for…
Opposite Meadow Walk on St Aldates, there is a shop where tourists like to buy souvenirs after their visit to Christ Church. It’s appropriately called ‘Alice’s Shop’ as this pretty…
“A young boy scout once asked me which was my favourite grave,” smiles Dick Richards, a volunteer guide for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, as he stands amidst the rows…
A few years back two friends, George Townsend and Duncan Montgomery took a walk through Oxford to Parson’s Pleasure, a grassy stretch on the river Cherwell notorious as a spot…
We are standing alongside two large green industrial wheelie bins in the delivery area for The Covered Market in the heart of Oxford. It’s not the most salubrious of places,…
If there isn’t already a grotesques and gargoyles tour of Oxford there really should be. Characterful stone carvings celebrating all of life from monsters to mermaids, demons to dragons, professors…
You might catch a glimpse of his imposing figure from the window of your carriage as you chug past Oxford on the Cherwell Valley Line from Banbury to Didcot. Walking…
I am standing at the scene of a crime. Not far from The Oxford Sausage headquarters in front of the side entrance to The Ashmolean Museum on St Giles. It…
It is Thursday morning so I head to the open-air market on Gloucester Green. At the heart of today’s city this is a square of flats and shops sandwiched between…