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…
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Chris Raworth, fairground model maker
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…
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Cecily Peele, author, illustrator, mapmaker (1892-1984)
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…
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Chiang Yee’s Oxford
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…
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Looking for Gerald
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…
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Free Triton
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…
