• the crooked house

    Kybald Twychen

    I have long been intrigued by the pretty gabled house that stands in a quiet cul de sac near Oxford’s High Street. For it is a miracle as to how the place stays upright. The walls sag, the windows are wonky and the drainpipes don’t quite run in straight lines. I often wonder whether the Corpus Christi students who now live here negotiate the lopsided landings and how they keep their books and belongs from sliding from the sloping shelves.

    November 16, 2025
    Builders and buildings

  • The Vacant Chair

    The photograph above shows the latest cohort of undergraduates coming to study at Hertford College, Oxford. It is taken on the west side of the Old Buildings Quadrangle – you can just glimpse the corner of the famous stone spiral staircase that leads up to the dining hall on the left. But this is 1919, one year after the end of the Great War. Some of the men smile but the general air is one of pensive seriousness. Look closely and one man wears a black armband. And there’s a vacant seat in the middle.

    November 8, 2025
    In memoriam

  • Autumn in Oxford

    Autumn has arrived in Oxford. And it is glorious. For the city and its parks are awash with fiery reds, buttery yellows and orange oches.

    November 1, 2025
    Flora and fauna

  • Of dustcarts, pigs’ swill and white linen towels

    Albert Ernest Smith was born in 1903 and started work aged 13 for what was then known by the Orwellian title of The Cleansing Department, part of Oxford Corporation (now Oxford City Council). His first job was as a dustman, later driving a small van from which he serviced the central Oxford public lavatories.

    October 25, 2025
    Street Life

  • To Worcester College chapel for a lesson in creationism

    My local chapel is at Worcester College, close by to where Beaumont Palace once stood and where two Kings of England were born. It doesn’t look much from the outside. But once through the doors, you cannot fail to be moved by the magnificence of it all, every nook and cranny dripping with elaborate decoration. At once you are hit by a riot of colour, blues, greens, reds, purples, and gold. Lots of gold.

    October 11, 2025
    College life, Dodos & other Oxford animals, Flora and fauna

  • A new public statue for Oxford

    I’d tagged along with photographer John Milnes, who has been following the local sculptor, Alex Wenham in the two year process it has taken to create from commission to completion. Who will it represent? Why was it ordered? And how was the finished piece achieved? Here in a series of pictures and John’s photographs, we tell the story.

    September 27, 2025
    Arts and crafts, College life, Oxford portraits

  • Graham Andrews, Salter’s Skipper

    I’d come to Folly Bridge to meet Graham Andrews. For today he is skippering the Salter’s passenger service that meanders along the river Thames from here to Iffley Lock. The third generation of Andrews to work on the boats, (it’s four if you count his daughter who does a bit of part-time work on the bar) he has promised to let me join him while he fills me in with something of his family history. And at the age of 82, I reckon he has a few stories to tell.

    September 20, 2025
    Oxford portraits, Trade and Industry, Washhouses & other watery places

  • Aboard the Corpus Christi Barge 

    I’ve often spotted it on my walk along the towpath from Folly Bridge to Iffley. Across on the east bank of the Isis, nestled into the Kidney Stream, an old cut leading to the Cherwell from the Thames just before you reach Donnington Bridge. A fanciful floating pavilion rising from the water, its curved prow reminiscent of classical longboats, flagpole erect, pilasters framing the door to a whimsical white wooden cabin with hobbit like oval windows. There’s an external staircase leading to a raised rooftop garden overhung with willow, a tall chimney in the middle from which on colder days white plumes of smoke announce that there are occupants below. It all looks very romantic. 

    September 12, 2025
    College life, Washhouses & other watery places