Christ Church Meadow: the dramatic flood of November 1852 (when railway passengers had to be rowed in boats to the city), and the much less dramatic flooding today (13 Feb 2026), viewed from the opposite direction

St Scholastica's Day (10 February) has come around again. On this day in 1355 the most serious Oxford town & gown riot ever took place, with 62 scholars killed: www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/mayors/gover...

Regent's Park College has submitted a planning application for change of use of the Oxfam bookshop at 56 St Giles' from sales of goods (Use Class E (a)) to provision of education (Use Class F1(a)). You can see the history of the building here: www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/stgiles/tour...

The Oxford Preservation Trust now gives regular tours of the Painted Room in Cornmarket. The next one is on Wednesday 11 February 2026, 12.30-1pm. Book here: app.sheepcrm.com/oxfordpreser...

ANNUAL STOCKTAKING CLOSURE Oxfordshire History Centre will close to visitors at 4.30pm on Thursday 22nd January and will re-open at 9.30am on Tuesday 10th February. Our remote enquiry service will continue as usual during this fortnight.

Giles Gilbert Scott was the architect of the New Bodleian Library (now renamed the Weston Library). Today's Historic England blog shows some of the buildings outside Oxford that he designed heritagecalling.com/2026/01/22/m...

The Museum of Oxford in the Town Hall will begin charging £4 for adult tickets from next Monday. Entry will remain free for carers, volunteers, and people on benefits, and there will be 12 free open days each year. A petition against charging has 1,500 signatures. www.oxford.gov.uk/news/article...

More on “Warneford 200”. Note that the exhibition is in the Old Cloakroom opposite the cabinet with the City Mace etc and not in the main part of the Museum of Oxford www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A mosaic on the floor of the porch leading into 14 Turl Street (now The Missing Bean) remembers the Hedderly tobacconists who occupied the shop from at least 1881 to the 1930s: www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/streets/ghos...

The British Workman in Old High Street, Headington opened in December 1880 to promote temperance, and 2d tokens were distributed among the poor in lieu of cash to prevent abuse. More here: www.headington.org.uk/history/buil...

Happy Christmas!

Postcard of the south end of Cornmarket Street when trams still ran through it to and from (1) the Banbury Road and (2) Kingston Road (via Beaumont Street and Walton Street).

Here the Mayor of Oxford expresses his opinion to the Oxford Local Board on 21 July 1868 about the start of the St John’s College development of north Oxford (as reported in Jackson’s Oxford Journal four days later)

Here are Oxford’s oldest post box (a Victorian Penfold pillar box dating from 1866/7 at Park Town) and its newest one (a Charles III pedestal box of 2025 at the Roundway in Headington

Jane Austen went to school for a short time in Oxford and her father and brothers studied at St John’s College, which is putting on a free exhibition from Wed 3 to Mon 8 December 2025, 10am to 5pm daily, on “The Austens at Oxford” www.sjc.ox.ac.uk/discover/eve...

The top of the Norman tower at St Michael-at-the Northgate Church with its new handrail balustrade (planning permission 24/01668/FUL), and the the whole church in 1834, when the tower still had its battlements

James Stevens Curl, who completed his architectural qualifications at the Oxford School of Architecture and whose books included “The Erosion of Oxford”, died on 5 November 2025, aged 88. Here is his obituary in The Times: archive.ph/tuW5r

War memorials in Oxford (not all, but too many): www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/war/

Some Oxford weather vanes: (1) Hertford College, with date of 1924 when they took over the octagonal chapel; (2) Indian Institute, with elephant; (3) Lloyds Bank, with sailing ship (continued ...)

Thirteen fine old houses were demolished to make way for the New Bodleian Library, and another two had their foundations damaged in the demolition process and were rebuilt as the present right-hand side of Blackwell’s. Here is a photograph taken from the Sheldonian Theatre showing some of them

At matches held in the two cockpits in Holywell, the poor birds represented their counties. This advertisement is from the Gloucester Journal of 30 September 1754. There is more information on the two Holywell cockpits here: www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/holywell/mis...

There are vacant buildings all over Oxford following the move of seven faculties and two institutes to the Schwarzman Centre. One of these is 34 St Giles’ Street, where a blue plaque remembers the builders Daniel Evans and Joshua Symm: www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/stgiles/tour...

Today (19 October) is St Frideswide’s Day: she is the patron saint of the University, the City, and the Diocese of Oxford. Here is a post from Morris Oxford to celebrate her day: morrisoxford.co.uk/oxfem/

Here is the new sculpture of Dervorguilla of Galloway outside Balliol College's new buildings in St Cross Road. She was the wife of Sir John de Balliol and both played a large part in the foundation of the college. There is more information on her Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dervorg...

There’s an article here from @oxfordclarion.bsky.social about the exciting discovery of Saxon walls at Speedwell House: oxfordclarion.uk/have-we-foun...

Here are the four female statues over the entrance to the Taylorian that were sculpted by William Grinsell Nicholl in 1846. They represent Italian, French, German, and Spanish.

“Well preserved” walls potentially dating back to Saxon times have been discovered in excavations at Speedwell House, the building just off St Aldates which is proposed as Oxfordshire County Council’s new HQ. As first reported by the Clarion, relocation plans are currently on hold after the find.

Another piece of Oxford’s heritage is for sale: offers in excess of £850,000 are invited for the Grade II listed Cowley Road Methodist Church that was designed by Stephen Salter and built by Kingerlee in 1903: s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/agents-socie...

Does anyone know what this "potentially significant archaeological find" at Speedwell House is? It could leave the county council that was planning to there homeless

This small plaque in the pavement outside the Saïd Business School remembers Oxford’s other railway station, built in 1851 (one year before the GWR one on the Botley Road). It was demolished to make way for the business school and rebuilt at Quainton in 2000 www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/streets/insc...

New page with more information on Oxford's Black Assizes here: www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/streets/insc...

Oxfordshire’s Old County Hall in New Road that houses the council chamber and coroner’s court has been sold (along with the adjacent modern block of offices) to L & G, who plan to turn the site into a hotel www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The City Church at Carfax was demolished in 1896 except for its medieval tower, but its bells still ring out. On Monday 8 September 2025 at 12 noon they rang to mark the third anniversary of the accession of King Charles III

Today is the Monday following the first Sunday after St Giles’ Day (1 September), so it must be St Giles’ Fair: www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/stgiles/fair/

Nos. 32 and 33/33A St Giles’ have belonged to Blackfriars since 2018 but the ground-floor shops remain vacant. Here is a brief history of the occupants of these three old shops (which were combined to form a bank in 1977): www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/stgiles/tour...

There is an Archaeology Open Day at Hertford College on Saturday 6 September 2025, 10.30am–3.30pm, with a chance to look around the college chapel too: www.hertford.ox.ac.uk/event/archae...

The Warneford Asylum/Hospital has been in Headington since 1826, but after 200 years its old buildings are likely to become a college of the University of Oxford. Here is its brief history, with details of the current planning application at the end www.headington.org.uk/history/list...

For those who don’t know, the 1876 Street Plan of Oxford is incredibly detailed (but sadly does not include later suburbs). Click on the square you are interested in, and then on OK and Full Screen to see the layout of streets and houses www.oxfordshirehistory.org.uk/public/maps/...

This chronogram is over the entrance to St Edmund Hall in Queen’s Lane. Many people may not know what the year signifies even after deciphering this one, as it does not mark the college's foundation, so here is the solution: www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/streets/insc...

The builders who have obscured the street sign here have meticulously retained the historic hyphen in QUEENS-LANE. This is one of fifteen surviving street signs in Oxford where the hyphen shows that they date from the mid-nineteenth century: www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/streets/xtra...

The 18th-century Radcliffe Observatory will be restored with a £3m gift from American businessman Stephen Schwarzman. The observatory is now part of Green Templeton College on Woodstock Road and faces the humanities centre named after Schwarzman, opening next month. www.gtc.ox.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Blackwell's bookshop has opened its new 'Oxford shop' at 53 Broad Street. The music department remains accessible inside, down the stairs to the Norrington Room. The Oxford shop brings together books about the city and the university as well as by local authors.

The Boundary Brook runs all the way from Headington down to the River Thames, but much of it is now culverted underground. From 1889 to 1929 this brook marked the boundary between the City of Oxford and the three villages of Headington, Cowley, and Iffley www.headington.org.uk/history/misc...

“The Netty” in St Giles’ offers two suites, each with its own flight of steps, offering “a one-of-a-kind boutique stay in central Oxford, set within beautifully restored Victorian public toilets”. Railings by William Lucy thenetty.co.uk

Between 1384 and 1858 many Oxford wills were proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, and you can search for them here and download the original wills free if you sign in to your National Archives account (easy to create if you don’t have one) www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-yo...

Yesterday two new history information boards were installed on the bridge built in St Ebbe's in 1927 to enable employees at the new part of the gas works on the south side of the river to walk to work. Here are photographs of the bridge in 1945 with two gasometers visible and of the two boards

Here is a brief history of William Baker House, built in 1915 as show-rooms for a cabinet-making business, recently vacated by Waterstone's, and now destined to be a visitor attraction celebrating Harry Potter: www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/broad/buildi...

Here are diamond-shaped tiles in the floor of @universitychurch.bsky.social remembering Richard Bradgate and his wife Elizabeth (both of whom were described by Thomas Hearne as “proud & empty of sense”) and their infant son. More about them here: www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/doctors/apot...

Barclays Bank rebuilding 53 Cornmarket Street next to the Clarendon Hotel in 1922 in the same style as No. 54 to the south (which had been built as the Shakespeare Hotel in 1865).

Ruskin School of Art in the High Street: The Design & Access Statement listed under the Documents tab for planning application 25/01540/LBC includes the Heritage Statement and gives an excellent history of the building with some unusual photographs: public.oxford.gov.uk/online-appli...