A spicy mix of Oxford stories from a house once belonging to a city sausage maker.
They are hidden all over Oxford and beyond. Outside, amongst the trees of parks and gardens, positioned in courtyards and parking lots. Huge ancient, crowned heads, features blackened with time, hair interlaced with lichen, lips softened by moss, some so weathered it is hard to see there ever was a face shaped out of the blocks of stone.
I was gratified to hear from an Oxford Sausage reader of my post on the swift tower in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, asking if was I aware of the heraldic version of the swift, the martlet. This is a mythical bird drawn in such a way that rather than have legs, the bird has tufts of feathers.
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 depiction of the city is to do it an injustice, for you will be sure to discover something new with every fresh look.
Trevor Joseph was three when he moved with his mother to Fourth Avenue, Slade Park, Headington. 64 years later and we are trying to find the location where his house…
But there is only one blue plaque. Displayed on the wall of number 16 it remembers the artist William Turner, who lived and worked here from 1833 until his death in 1862. Close by The Oxford Sausage headquarters, it is not uncommon to witness tour guides introducing the place as the home of JMW Turner, arguably England’s most famous Romantic painter. But this is a different Turner altogether.
Today I am venturing a short distance out of town to a place known as Pleasant Land. I don’t as yet know why it is called this. I am just thinking what a wonderful name with its promise of green pastures and natural beauty, both of which are in evidence as I make the steep climb away from the busy city up to Boars Hill, an area of countryside between Oxford and Abingdon.
‘The Silent Traveller in Oxford’ by Chiang Yee is inscribed in a flowing red script along the spine of a cream linen bound volume, with its Chinese calligraphic equivalent written vertically from top to bottom on the front cover. Open its pages and there are exquisite watercolours, deliciously comic cartoons and beautifully written poems and travelogues describing Yee’s perambulations around the city in the early 1940’s. A snip, I thought, at £14. When I return home, I discover that Yee was something of a celebrity.
Bring out the mustard, dish up the mayonnaise, keep ketchup at the ready. For today I am both astonished and delighted to be celebrating the second anniversary of The Oxford Sausage. Publishing a weekly Oxford Sausage story for two years makes for over one hundred of the things. Several strings I’d say and enough I’d hope to make the party go with a bang. You are all invited.
In between showers last week I cycled over Magdalen Bridge to East Oxford to meet with photographer Simon Murison-Bowie. He’s written a book in which he explores some of the very first photographs taken of Oxford back in the 1840’s.
Hurly burly, higgeldy piggledy, nitty gritty – what’s not to love about these delightful, reduplicative words. They infuse the English language with humour, playfulness and well, a little bit of razzle dazzle. So when I discovered there was such a thing as a crinkle crankle wall and that one resided in Oxford I felt compelled to search it out. Easy peasy I thought.