In the footsteps of Joe Pullen
Josiah Pullen liked to walk. Believing the exercise helped him stay ‘vigorous and healthy’, he made the same journey every day for 57 years. Sometimes both in the morning and evening.
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Francis Hamel and his Oxford Paintings
Painted during three intensive periods over a period of 25 years, to those who live in the city they are instantly familiar snapshots, illustrated vignettes that cleverly capture that sense of surprise that many of us feel at the sight of a soaring medieval spire over a modern rooftop, or a field of meadow flowers glimpsed through the railings of a bus busy high street.
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Dan Arnold and his Harris hawk
Every so often while out walking I will come across something or somebody that takes me by surprise. Stops me in my tracks. And so it is on my regular route to the University Parks when I encounter Dan Arnold and Trigger.
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William Stokes and the art of vaulting
I am delighted to present for your amusement some engravings by George Glover from William Stokes’s book ‘The vaulting master or the art of vaulting’ in the hope that they will amaze and entertain you as much as they have me.
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The story of Ralph Sheldon and his Oxfordshire tapestry map
I am staring at a vast map on the wall of the cavernous Blackwell Hall in the Weston Library, a stone’s throw from the centre of Oxford. How I could have missed this huge hanging in the hundreds of times I have walked in this space I have no idea. But today as if by some magic here I am, standing in front of it, taking it all in.
Transfixed.
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Oscar Nemon and his Pleasant Land
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…
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Trevor Joseph and Slade Camp
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…
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Kazem Hakimi – Fish and chip shop photographer
Kazem Hakimi has run the fish and chip shop at the far end of the Iffley Road for the past 36 years. It’s an old school takeaway. A narrow frontage…
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A walk to Turner’s tomb (from St John Street to Shipton-on-Cherwell)
From Wittgenstein to Thom Yorke many remarkable people have resided in the honey stone terraced houses of St John Street in central Oxford, built to accommodate the growing number of…
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Annora, anchoress
It is easy to miss Annora’s grave. For she is buried under a moss covered stone slab lying flat on the ground, close up against the south wall of the…
