Oxford's Covered Market

In the centre of the University City of Oxford off the High Street you go through lanes and passageways to find the perfect antidote to Clone Town Britain, Oxford’s Covered Market. Full of colour, enterprise and activity it is coveted both by the Town and Gown; The citizens of Oxford and the great floating population of students, staff and visitors to its Universities. The Covered Market offers shops and Cafes run by real people for real people selling real stuff often sourced locally! So you will find butchers, bakers, fishmongers, greengrocers, craft and clothes shops and much more along with friendly Cafes not to mention Moo-Moo's Milkshakes which serves 165 different flavours!



Oxford’s Covered Market was officially opened on 1 November 1774 and is still going strong today. Originally its width corresponded to the elegant and balanced frontage of the houses (now shops) at 13, 14, 15, and 16 High Street, which were rebuilt in 1774. The Covered Market was started in response to a general wish to clear up the untidy mess and unsavoury stalls of traders from the main streets.



John Gwynn, the architect of Magdalen Bridge, drew up the plans and designed the High Street front with its four entrances. In 1772, the newly-formed Market committee, half of whose members came from the town and half from the university, accepted an estimate of nine hundred and sixteen pounds ten shillings, for the building of twenty butchers' shops. Twenty more soon followed, and after 1773 meat was allowed to be sold only inside the market. From this nucleus the market grew, with stalls for garden produce, pig meat, dairy products and fish.


Pieminster Pie shop

Oxford has had a market probably since the late ninth century, when the town was fortified, or perhaps earlier, but the first written reference is found in twelfth century records. It started at Carfax (the main crossroads) and spread along adjoining streets. Land at the town centre was expensive, and so the shops here had narrow frontages, barely two metres wide. This small size makes it easier to believe that there were, at one time, forty seven tailors shops in Oxford! Shops then were workshops where goods were made to order, rather than stores; except perhaps the spicers shops which were more like our grocers today.





In the Middle Ages, goldsmiths, mercers (cloth merchants) and tanners used to trade in shops on or near the site of today’s Covered Market. There were some academic halls (student hostels) here too. Butchers stalls were set up in High Street and Butchers Row (now Queen Street). So many traders existed in and around the centre that travelling through the town must have become increasingly difficult as more and more people were attracted to the market, and in 1771 the Mileways Act condemned the remains of medieval street trading in High Street and St Aldates.


The Oxford made Mini in cake in the Covered Market


Life will be better when we get out of here?

The earliest stalls were in colonnaded blocks: the high-raftered roofs of today are the outcome of nineteenth century rebuilding. Some stalls are used as single units but many traders have expanded their businesses and taken over several tenancies. Today you can still buy a great selection of meat and fish here, and numerous cheeses, but the scope of trading has enlarged since the early days. Fruit and vegetable stalls still make colourful displays but much of the produce is now imported from all over the world. You will find all sorts of goods, clothes, records, pine furniture and much, much, more.





As with many a market, its smells are part of the atmosphere. It may be the smell of fresh ground coffee that draws you in for refreshment, but it could be the attractive displays of the tenants, flowers, fruit, and so on that prompts you to look for the unexpected or special gift. If the spice of life is variety, then it will be seen here.




Diversity on a cake

From the wide variety of outlets let me pick out some personal favourites. The Oxford Cake Shop is located within the historic Covered Market and is a focal point for many of the guided walking tours that pass through the city as well as providing locals and tourists with an opportunity to watch skilled cake artists at work. Their cakes are unique, combining superb craftsmanship and imagination with a very definite sense of humour. Their display never fails to make me smile.


The Royal Wedding Cake



http://www.the-cakeshop.co.uk

Hayman’s Fisheries was opened by Charles Hayman in 1928 who continued to work in the business until his retirement in the late 1960s. Its large homidorium filled with live crabs and lobsters is always an eye catcher but it specialises in fresh British indoor fish and has a large wholesale business supplying the colleges and catering outlets in Oxford.

http://www.haymansfisheries.co.uk


M. Feller, Sons and Daughter.

The wonderfully titled butchers “M. Feller, Son & Daughter” whose equally wonderful slogan is “In nature we trust" is a superb organic butcher’s whose display coming up to Christmas of plump turkeys is a sight to behold. It always has a large display of Fowl and Game including Deer and Wild Boar at Xmas. Many a kid is shocked passing by when they find out what really happened to Bambi!

http://mfeller.co.uk

The Oxford Cheese company is the nearest you will get to a French Fromagerie in England and like all real cheese shops there is no need to ask questions; just inhale and taste! It has a great selection always well presented in good condition.

http://www.oxfordfinefood.com/oxford-organix-ltd.html/

Ben’s Cookies, founded by Helge Rubenstein, an avowed chocoholic, in 1983 now has 11 stores but the outlet in the Covered Market was their first. The Oxford public are a partisan bunch but many agree with their opinion that Ben’s are just the best cookies you can get, often straight out od the in-shop oven.

http://www.benscookies.com



My own personal favourite is another family run business called Moo-Moo's. It offers a mind boggling range of 165 different flavours of shakes and smoothies. Set up by Jason and Bina in 2006 moo-moo's has gained a cult following and status. It is popular amongst the students, tourists and locals alike, offering a wide range of chilled fruit smoothies to milkshakes made with ice-cream and blended with the favourite ingredient of your choice. The name moo-moo's was chosen for the business because their oldest daughter "India" when she was a little child used to call her milky drinks "moo moo’s” she is now 14 years old!! My own personal favourite? None other than the rhubarb and custard milk shake. Oh, I’m glad I told you that! The pressure of keeping it a secret was getting to me!


165 Flavours!

http://www.moo-moos.co.uk/

There are many good cafes and coffeshops in the Market so there are no shortage of pit shop opportunities and being frequented year round by students and natives they are generally good value. My own favourite is the unpretentious Browns Café run by a charming and hard working Portuguese couple.



Do make a point of visiting the Covered Market and supporting independent retailers when you are in Oxford. Outside the Market Oxford sadly is very much part of Clone Town Britain with the High Street and the Centres dominated by Identikit chains. In the Covered Market it has the real deal, a most enjoyable splash of colour and atmosphere run by independent retailers providing the type of shopping experience “Real “ people can relate to. A compulsory stop on any visit to the City of the Dreaming Spires.






For more info and market opening times see;

http://www.oxford-covered-market.co.uk



See also; Oxford Rambles

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/05/oxford-rambles.html

Tube Heritage

St John's Wood Station - The signs say "Bakerloo Line" because originally it was on the Stanmore Branch of the Bakerloo Line which joined the other branch at Baker Street.


St John's Wood escalators 1939


Arnos Grove Station

Sixteen Tube stations were today granted Grade II listed status to protect their architectural heritage. The stations include Oxford Circus, Covent Garden, Aldwych and St John's Wood. The grading will protect station facades, including 100-year-old ornate tiling and brickwork, but allow internal changes for safety measures. Simon Thurley, English Heritage chief executive, said: "They are as valuable to London's architectural story as many more famous buildings like the Houses of Parliament."




Sudbury Town station

The stations include several designed by Leslie Green and have historic and architectural significance, illustrating the development of the capital's transport system as well as pioneering the use of a strong image which is recognised around the world.




Cockfosters Station

The stations given Grade II status are:

• Aldwych
• Belsize Park
• Brent Cross
• Caledonian Road


Caledonian Road

• Chalk Farm
• Chesham
• Covent Garden
• Hendon Central
• Oxford Circus (originally two separate stations on the north-west corner of Argyll Street and Oxford Street, and the north-east corner of Argyll Street and Oxford Street including the office above)


• Perivale
• Redbridge
• Russell Square
• St John's Wood
• West Acton
• Wood Green

Three other stations have had their listing upgraded from Grade II to Grade II*. They are:

• Arnos Grove
• Oakwood
• Sudbury Town

The listed stations include several of the tube stations designed by Leslie Green whose ‘ox-blood’ red tile facades, pioneered the use of a strong and consistent corporate image that’s recognised around the world. All the stations have historic and architectural significance, illustrating the development of the capital’s Underground system.


Arnos Grove ticket hall with Passimeter


Escalators with bronze uplighters

The Directors of London Underground in the 20s and 30s saw good design as good for business. By the example it set under Frank Pick the Underground was gradually able to change the public’s attitude to railway stations which had been seen as shabby and inhospitable places. Sir Nicholas Pevsner wrote that Pick saw in every detail a “visual propaganda” and he used this not only to improve the Underground but the environment as a whole. Charles Holden brought the Underground station to the forefront of modern architecture: This achievement is unequalled by any other transport company before or since.

As the Guardian Newspaper's Architectural correspondent (and former London Transport management trainee) Jonathan Glancey observed;

“The first of Charles Holden's tube stations for Frank Pick was Sudbury Town, on the Piccadilly line, opened in 1931. There had been nothing like this distinctly modern yet well-crafted building in Britain before. With typical modesty, Holden, a retiring, teetotal, vegetarian Quaker draper's son from Bolton, Lancashire, chose to describe his first modern masterpiece as "a brick box with a concrete lid. Possibly, just possibly, Holden meant something more.



I can't help thinking that this truly great and still under-rated English architect was thinking of Inigo Jones (1573-1652), who had instigated a revolution in British architecture in the reign of James I when he designed the country's first truly classical buildings. When his client Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford, asked Jones to add a chapel "as cheap as a barn" to his smart residential development built around the new Covent Garden piazza, the architect replied "then you shall have the handsomest barn in England". Sudbury Town station is surely transport design's equivalent of St Paul's, Covent Garden.”


Covent Garden Station 1907

“Tube stations are great examples of the capital’s hidden heritage,” said Heritage Minister John Penrose. “Although listing does not mean these stations will remain unchanged for all time, it does mean that any redevelopment plans will have to take the sites’ heritage value into account, which seems entirely right and will ensure the best of design is preserved for the future.”


55, Broadway - London Underground's iconic HQ built in 1929 in the "airspace" above St. James's Park Station

For more on the architect Charles Holden see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/11/holden-goes-underground.html

For more on London Underground’s Grade 1 listed iconic HQ, 55, Broadway, see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/give-my-regards-to-55-broadway.html

For the history of London Underground and one of the world’s Great Railway Journeys see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/01/great-circle-line-journey.html

Though we take it for granted, and frequently curse it to high heaven, the London Underground is a wonder. The Tube network is the oldest and longest underground railway system serving a major city. Its history goes back to 1863, its conception even earlier.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/10/londons-wunderground.html


Aldwych Tube Station with the tiling showing the original name "Strand"

People in London also used tube stations during the Blitz. They would buy a platform tickets and camp on the platforms for the night. Sheltering in the tube was popular because it was dry, warm and quiet down there. The government was afraid that the overcrowded platforms would disrupt the movement of troops and tried to stop the public from using the tube stations as shelters. The people refused to give them up and the government was forced to back down. In some cases underground stations were closed down and given over to the public to use during air raids.

For the unique place which is Aldwych Tube Station and its role in the Blitz see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/11/blitz-on-underground.html

For more see ARCHIBLOGS, TUBE BLOGS and TRANSPORT BLOGS in the Blog sidebar >>>>>

Buscot Park, Oxfordshire

Buscot Park South Garden Front


North Entrance Front

The National Trust is nothing if not a broad church encompassing everything from back-to-backs in Birmingham to splendid blingtastic mansions such as the wondrously restored and goodie filled Rothschild’s Waddesdon Manor near Aylesbury.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/waddesdon-manor-buckinghamshire.html

What I particularly enjoy is the plurality of properties and approaches. Some are fully restored but others are “conserved” or kept at a particular time in their history. So the National Trust (to its great credit) does not adopt a “one size fits all” approach to the properties and nature reserves in its care. This plurality is reflected in Buscot Park which is actually managed with some aplomb by the 3rd Lord Faringdon of the Henderson Banking family who are also involved with Cazenoves, one of the last of the old time City Stockbrokers.


Entrance

A stipulation in the agreement with the National Trust stated that Buscot would be leased to the Barons Faringdon, enabling them to remain in residence. This arrangement has continued to the present day. The present and 3rd Lord Faringdon, with his wife, not only lives in the house, but is responsible for the day to day management and decoration of the mansion. Although Lord and Lady Faringdon have built a smaller house, the Garden House, in the grounds for their personal use during the summer months when the tourist season is at its peak, the interior of the house has very much the uncontrived air of a private residence rather than that of a public art gallery




Chairs commemorating the Battle of the Nile

However it does house a major portion of the Faringdon Collection which includes some outstanding Pre-Raphaelite pieces. The present Lord Faringdon has added many works of art to the collection, including contemporary paintings, ceramics, glass and silver. The house, gardens and grounds are open each year from April to September.
Buscot Park is an outstanding eighteenth century house (1780) in the Palladian style with a twentieth century garden. The garden is a prime example of the Italian mode of the Arts and Crafts style, designed by Harold Peto in 1912. It has a canal which steps down the slope through the woods, edged by hedges, urns and statues. The kitchen garden is now planted with flowers, to a design by Peter Coats, with hornbeam tunnels.


The water gardens, designed by Harold Peto, link the more formal gardens, close to the house, through the park to the distant lake.

We had an immediate introduction to the personal quality of Buscot when we went to the tea room on arrival. Like many before we were entranced the vigorous and colourful murals that decorate the Buscot tea room, which was converted from part of the eighteenth-century stable block in 1991. The murals, painted a secco (on dry plaster), between 1991 and 1994, are the work of Ellen-Ann Hopkins, and they evoke the Renaissance style of Veronese, who covered the walls of the Villa Barbaro with amusing portraits of the owner and his family. Here, the artist has included many symbolic objects whose full meaning is understood only by the family and friends of Lord Faringdon, though everyone will recognise the family lurchers, the black swans from the Buscot Park lakes, and various flowers from the Four Seasons garden. Rather than include her own self-portrait, the artist has allowed her faithful black Scottie, Macbeth, to stand in for her. Quixotic and enigmatic, the frescoes are also full of energy and colour and form a part of the continuing artistic tradition at Buscot Park.






Teahouse Murals

Buscot Park was built between 1780 and 1783 for Edward Loveden Townsend inspired by the architecture of the great Renaissance architect, Andrea Palladio. In 1859 his great-grandson sold the estate to an Australian tycoon, Robert Tertius Campbell. He died in 1887 after spending a fortune turning Buscot into a model agricultural estate. The estate (of 4,000 acres) was in some disrepair by the time 'Squire Campbell' bought it, but he employed one hundred men to help build a reservoir, delivering a state of the art irrigation system to the pastures, which would turn it into a hugely efficient farm. He had the - at the time, outrageous - idea to grow sugar beet, which would in turn be distilled to make spirit alcohol. He had a working distillery built at the estate (on a small island next to the lock - still called 'Brandy Island'). The distillery closed in 1879, after the French men he employed to run it were called back to France to fight in the Franco-Prussian War, and the Englishmen who took over didn't really know what they were doing. Mr Campbell also built a mill, a turbine, a gas works, and had a little railway; he was known for his fondness for state of the art machinery.


Saloon


Entrance Hall

He died (bankrupt) in 1885, and two years after his death the estate was sold to Sir Alexander Henderson, a highly successful city financier, later 1st Lord Faringdon whose descendants continue to live here. With catholic tastes in art, he bought paintings by Rembrandt, Murillo, Reynolds and Burne-Jones, establishing a solid core to the Faringdon Collection. He was Chairman of the Great Central Railway from 1889 to 1922, and died 12 years after retiring from that position. He passed on Buscot Park (and his title) to his heir, his grandson Gavin Henderson (born in 1902).


Orangery


Buscot Park, one of the two flanking wings designed by Geddes Hyslop in 1934 to replace Victorian additions, considered incongruous.

Gavin Henderson, the 1st Lord Faringdon’s grandson and heir, was also an enthusiastic collector of pictures, and he added the bulk of the pictures to be seen at Buscot today. He also remodelled the house by removing the heavy Victorian additions that had compromised the original design, as well as building the two balancing pavilions that stand to the east and west of the house. He was educated at Eton, then Oxford, and one of the 'Bright Young Things' depicted in novels by Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh.





Unusually, for someone in his position, he became a member of the Labour Party (and later the Fabian Society). He was a staunch pacifist, so during the Second World War, gave his energies to the Fire Service. After the war he became a Labour County Councillor in London, and after that served on the Historic Buildings committee of the Greater London Council once it was formed. He died in 1977.


Swimming Pool




Theatre and murals

Other notable frescos at Buscot are on the swimming pool pavilion at the side of the house. Painted by John Hastings (who later became the Earl of Huntingdon) at some time in the late 1930s, they portray friends of the 2nd Lord Faringdon, and some of the Buscot Park staff. Lord Faringdon himself is portrayed as a young man addressing a Labour Party rally in the scene on the left (as you face the pool), while above is a portrait of Mr Cowdray, Buscot’s Farm Manager, leading a prize bull, and Mr Bastion, the Head Gardener, with some exotic blooms. John Hastings’ self-portrait is in the adjacent roundel, and the lady portrayed in the roundel opposite is Susan Lawrence, one of the first women Labour MPs and chairman of the Labour party from 1929 to 1930. Two other well-known figures portrayed here are Lord Berners, who lived at Faringdon House nearby, and Lady Violet Bonham-Carter, both of whom are among the guests of Lord Faringdon seated at dinner. Altogether apart from their artistic merit these murals are a remarkable piece of political and social history.



At Buscot Park you will also find exquisite gardens, including the spectacular Water Garden designed by Harold Peto and the Four Seasons Walled Garden created by the present Lord Faringdon. The House is home to the Faringdon Collection which contains an extraordinary array of paintings, furniture and objets d'art. There is also a small purpose built theatre which is regularly used for concerts, plays and corporate hospitality.



The Faringdon Collection, which can be viewed at Buscot Park in Oxfordshire and the Faringdon’s London property in Beauchamp Place SW7, is the result of a century of collecting works of art by the Lords Faringdon. It includes paintings by Rembrandt, Reynolds, Rubens, van Dyck and Murillo, and there is a small but important collection of drawings. British art, especially of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is particularly well represented in the Collection, with some outstanding works by the Pre-Raphaelite artists Burne-Jones and Rossetti, and the present Lord Faringdon continues to acquire new works by contemporary artists.


View across lake

The Legend of Briar Rose is the title of a series of paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones which were completed between 1885 and 1890. The four original paintings - The Briar Wood, The Council Chamber, The Garden Court and The Rose Bower - and an additional ten adjoining panels, are located at Buscot Park.

The Legend of Briar Rose

The Rose


The Garden Court


The Council Chamber


Briar Wood

For more on Edward Burne-Jones see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/09/wightwick-manor-wolverhampton.html

To the west of the house, the mellow red-brick walls of the original kitchen garden now shelter the Four Seasons garden, bright with the blooms of spring bulbs, flowering trees and drifts of multi-coloured day lilies, according to the time of year. To the east, woodland walks lead to one of Britain’s finest water gardens, an unusual marriage of Italianate formality with an English parkland landscape.


Chinese Warriors in the garden

From the south front of the house, the carriage drive sweeps away to the south east, down through mature woodland. From the north front of the house, the views take in the Little Lake and the Thames plain beyond. From neither point is any clue given of the splendid water garden that lies to the east of the house, reached by following the steps from the north terrace.





This is a lovely place to visit. Having walked up to the main house and found yourself looking across the back lawns a stunning Anglo- Italianate box edged walk leads you down to a sublime view of an enormous lake, the view tightly constrained by the narrowness of the avenue and height of trees. Rooms occur within the Avenue/walk with colonnades of Juniper and sleepy water features and waterway tempting you down to the lake.

Read more: http://www.gardenvisit.com/garden/buscot_park#ixzz1Rpd8DMRp

In 1956 the Buscot Park estate was bequeathed to the National Trust, and the contents of the house were subsequently transferred to the Trustees of the Faringdon Collection. The present Lord Faringdon lives at Buscot Park, administering the house and grounds on behalf of the National Trust. He continues to acquire new works by contemporary artists to enhance the Faringdon Collection. With the combination of a wonderful Palladian Mansion, beautiful setting and gardens and the high calibre Faringdon Collection this would be a very rewarding place to visit. However the personal touches, the sense that this is a home still lived in and the obvious love and attention shown by the family lift Buscot Park to another level and make visiting here particularly rewarding.





Postal Address;

The Estate Office, Buscot Park
Faringdon, Oxon SN7 8BU

Information Line: Tel: 01367 240932

Telephone (Mon - Fri ): Tel: 01367 240786

Website; http://www.buscot-park.com