brickwalls

No. 141 Woodstock Road, North Oxford, viewed from north west. Built in 1864, architect unknown. A Romanesque style villa, named "Walton Manor", established on a large estate of 30,000 square feet, at the southwest corner of Woodstock Road with St. Margaret's Road (named Rackham's Lane at that time). Built in red brick with black/blue (?) and white decorations (similar to 58 Banbury Rd). There's a large conservatory on the southwest side (right), connected to a glass-roofed south terrace. First leaseholder was John Obadiah Westwood, famous Entomologist and Hope Professor of Zoology. After his death in 1893, his nieces and heiresses, the Misses Swann ran the villa as a boarding house. In the 1950s & 60s, Sir Alister Hardy, Linacre Professor of Zoology was living here with his family, probably until his retirement in 1963. Together with Nos. 133 to 139, Walton Manor House was demolished in 1967/68 to make way for Russell Court. Most of the property's boundary wall is still standing, including some dogtooth brickwork on Woodstock Road. Remains of the entrance gate seen here, the arch removed and the doorway walled up, are also visible today from St. Margaret's Road. The house entrance was decorated with an elaborate tympanum made of stone, inscribed "Benedictus benedicat", the short grace used at some Oxford Colleges. It has recently (2022) been installed at Magdalen Colleges' Longwall Library. The house in the background should be No. 139 Woodstock Road, still unfinished (scaffolded) here, considering the lease date, this photograph could therefore be assumed to be taken around 1884, when No. 141 was already 20 years old. Sources: - T. Hinchcliffe: North Oxford (Yale Univ. Press) - Town Plan of Oxford XXXIII.11.21 (1876), National Library of Scotland. - St. Sepulchres Cemetery web site, Oxford - Historic England, Architectural Red Box Collection, photographs by Peter Spencer Spokes - Internet Archive (archive.org)

No. 3, Norham Gardens, named "Garford House". Grade II listed. Built in 1866/67, architect: Charles Buckeridge. This photograph shows the house just like it was originally built. Later, in the 1890s it was heavily extended (by about 50%) to the west (right), the entrance was moved to the street side and a large porch was added. The conservatory seen here was demolished, a new one being built at the houses' southeast side. Photographs from the 1960s show a second entrance door, vanished again in the 2000s, thus this house would have had been temporarily subdivided into multiple flats. That's why the brickwork of the front fassade looks a bit cobbled together today. Offered for sale at £ 5.5m in 2017, finally sold in 2022 to Atlantic Institute who refurbished the house as an 8-bedroom fellows residence and named it "Kopanong". The house in the background on the left is No. 5 Norham Gardens (by W. WIlkinson, 1865) which, although later divided into 4 flats, has retained its original character since 150 years. Sources: - T. Hinchcliffe: North Oxford (Yale Univ. Press) - Historic England Archive, Red Box Collection

Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Lost American Architecture, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Destroyed Works of Art and Architecture, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

Parts of this building were salvaged and reused - see: www.shorpy.com/node/5590

I love H.H. Richardson!