quatrefoils

Then & Now:

Hi, Thanks for adding your photo.

Len Memories of 18 Protection Post whilst at Cannon Row, presumably introduced after the Stone of Scone went walk about on Christmas Day 1950? Nice picture of the 'quieter' days.

John, I don't remember that protection post but I was on duty the night when the stone was removed from the throne and half way down the aisle the wheels on the makeshift cart collapsed. It was sometime in the seventies and the alarm worked!

Len Yes, unforgettable really, early 1960's it was 18 protection post, pretty grim in the middle of winter on night duty! One night (3am) had to search the interior with others, talk about eery, the hairs on the back of your neck stood up as you had no idea if there were intruders or not, thankfully none were present.

This is a pair of semi-detached houses. Note that although the outer bays (containing the circulation spaces) are gothic, the inner bays (containing the principal apartments) are much like any Victorian house, with large canted bays. This would appear to be the laying out of a grand suburb, with remains of countryside to the left and further development to the right. This is clearly high-class work, in stone where this is not the local habit (note the brick garden wall and, I think, the other houses).

aldisley Thank you for all this information!

Absolutely sure this is also North Oxford but I cant find it. This really needs to be posted in a flickr group such as What's That Picture. Someone who knows or lives in Oxford could identify it straight off.

Thank you Andy for your comment!

Nos. 17+18 Parks Road, North Oxford, viewed from north east. Semi-detached houses on the east side of the Keble Road Triangle (Keble / Parks / Banbury Rd), opposite to University Parks' West Walk. Built in 1872, architect unknown. Named "South Elms" (No. 17) and "North Elms" (No. 18). Built on an estate of 16,000 square feet (the front line was more than 180 feet). Lots of gothic revival elements, pointed arches around doors & windows, stained glass windows along the staircases, quatrefoil windows, finials on top of the corners of the central roof. Among the residents were William Merry, Oxford preacher, Lecturer and Rector of Lincoln College, at North Elms, and T.K. Cheyne, English Biblical Scholar & Oriel professor, at South Elms. The house in the background on the left is No. 15 Parks Road, the northern part of "East View", which is also shown in this album. The space between East View and South Elms remained vacant for 20 more years until "The Red House" (No. 16) was built and leased in 1895. In the 1930s it became the home of the family of Sir Howard Florey, nobel laureate for his work on the development of penicillin. In the late 1950s, No. 16 had to make way for a school building of the Dept. of Metallurgy, a glass/steel structure known today as Hume-Rothery Building. Once the most prominent building in this street, North & South Elms soon became overtopped by further post modern buildings of the evolving Science Area, particularly Thom Building in 1963 and Denys Wilkinson Building in 1967. In 1963, nearby Pitt Rivers Museum started to use No. 18 as external storage space for collection items. After these had been returned to the Museums' Upper Gallery in 1972, the building was stripped of everything reusable (roof tiles, windows) and eventually, in 1973, demolished to make way for Holder Building. Sources: - T. Hinchcliffe: North Oxford (Yale Univ. Press) - Town Plan of Oxfordshire XXXIII.15.7 (1876), National Library of Scotland - Picture Oxon, photographs by Malcolm Graham - Internet Archive (archive.org) - The Pitt Rivers Museum Conservation Plan View the other photographs of Victorian Architecture of North Oxford in this album.