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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
I was delighted to be invited to meet Chris Raworth at his workshop in Middle Barton, catching him just after he had assembled his set of gallopers for the last…
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…
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…
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…