Oxfordshire History Centre

Oxfordshire Health Archives, based here at Oxfordshire History Centre, have collaborated with the Museum of Oxford and the Oxfordshire Hospital School to produce this exhibition exploring: ‘Healing Spaces; Child Health in Oxford, from a traditional ward to the present day', through use of original records, photographs and objects. Open to the public free of charge at Oxford Town Hall, St Aldates, OX1 1BX. Mondays to Saturdays, 9 am – 5pm from 25th May 2019.

Thomas Photos Collection on Picture Oxon
Oxfordshire History Centre’s Thomas Photos Collection, containing images created by commercial photographer J.W. ‘Tommy’ Thomas, has just been re-launched online after a break in public access for several years. The collection offers an unrivalled pictorial record of historic buildings, local industries, retail businesses and social events in post-war Oxfordshire. Targets for Thomas’s photographic work included many of the University’...s colleges, for whom he took survey photos in the 1950s, as part of the Oxford Historic Buildings Appeal. Other examples of his local work include images of: Oxford University Press, Wolvercote Paper Mill, W. Lucy & Co. Ltd (electrical engineers), Hartwell Motors (Oxford) Ltd, Webbers (Oxford) Ltd (drapers and furnishers), Boffins Bakery, the A34 and M40 road construction, the 1955 Oxfordshire Show at Kidlington, and parties for John Allen, the Post Office and even Kidlington Bacon Factory!
The Thomas Photos collection was purchased by Oxfordshire County Council in 2001 and was the subject of a lottery-funded conservation, cataloguing and digitisation project in 2002-2003. The catalogue data and digital images were first published online on Heritage Search in 2006-07, but the data quality was very thin. Although our new online catalogue for images, Picture Oxon, was launched in 2014, The Thomas Photos data wasn’t in a fit state to republish on that platform, so we’re pleased to report that – after a mammoth data cleaning and enhancement project – the 93,000 catalogue records and 10,400 digital images are now back online on www.pictureoxon.org.uk. Find out more about J.W. Thomas’s career in photography, the collection of historic images he created, and our work to save them and make them publicly accessible : http://ow.ly/JQWr30oHlJY
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60 years of the Mini
On the 8th of May 1959 the first production Mini to be built at Cowley, rolled off the production line. We’ve been taking a look of Mini records in Oxfordshire History Centre collections. The first Mini to be registered with an Oxford City number plate 382 FJO can be found in vehicle registration records for 17th June 1959. Our collection of car related ephemera includes a brochure of “Accessories designed for the revolutionary "quality first" Morris mini-minor”. Mini- related images can also be found in our photographic collections www.pictureoxon.org.uk

On Saturday 27 April, our colleagues at the Bodleian Library are exploring Victorian Oxford through the Stereoscope. https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/…/victori an-oxford-through-th….
And here's a reminder that you can explore Oxfordshire History Centre's collection of stereoscopic images on our Picture Oxon website - https://bit.ly/pox_stereo

250 years of the Oxford Canal
On Friday 21st April 1769, George III gave Royal Assent to ‘An Act for making and maintaining a Navigable Canal from the Coventry Canal Navigation, to the City of Oxford’. This enabled the construction of the Oxford Canal to begin. Work commenced at the Coventry end and by March 1771, the first 10 miles had been completed. The canal reached Cropredy by October 1777, and Banbury by the end of March the following year. The final stretch of the can...al into the city of Oxford was constructed during 1789. The official opening of the canal at Oxford took place on the 1st January 1790. The following day the Oxford Journal reported: ‘The Oxford Canal was Yesterday opened by the Arrival of upwards Two Hundred Ton of Coals, besides Corn and other effects. The first Boat entered the Bason (basin) a few Minutes before Twelve o’Clock, displaying the Union Flag, and having on board the Band belonging to the Oxfordshire Militia’. Today, the canal which is 78 miles long, links Hawkesbury Junction on the Coventry Canal with the River Thames at Oxford.
Some early records of the Oxford Canal are to be found in the Thames Navigation Commission archive collection (O50) held here at Oxfordshire History Centre. Search our catalogue www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/heritagesearch for more information. More images of the Oxford Canal can be found on www.pictureoxon.org.uk
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Oxfordshire Village Scrapbook Competition 1955
This beautiful scrapbook, compiled by members of Iffley Women’s Institute, was the winning entry in an Oxfordshire Scrapbook Competition organised by Oxfordshire Rural Community Council during 1954/5. Individuals and organisations (such as schools, WIs, and community groups) were challenged to produce ‘the best scrapbook illustrating the life of any Oxfordshire parish or other community as it is today, and as it has been within... living memory’. Entrants were given a year to compile their albums which could include written work, paintings, drawings, maps and photographs old and new. Recommended topics included: all aspects of local history, natural history, and local customs and folklore. The collection of reminiscences and surveys of local life were encouraged. Furthermore, ‘Arrangement, accuracy, completeness, attractiveness, originality, suitability of binding and durability of paper and ink’ were to be considered by the judges. Our pictures show: the hand-worked cover of Iffley WI’s album featuring the snake’s-head fritillaries found in local meadows; and members of Iffley History Society examining the album.
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Card catalogues of archive collections now online
The National Archives (TNA) has recently launched a new application called Manage Your Collections, which enables archive services to upload their catalogues onto TNA’s Discovery website using a spreadsheet template.
We are taking this opportunity to make accessible online for the first time some of our oldest catalogues which are still in card format. These collections are unlikely to be re-catalogued in the foreseeable futur...e, so Manage Your Collections has provided an opportunity to make these records and their content more widely known.
The catalogues uploaded so far are: • CH/CN Properties in New Street, Chipping Norton • CH/E Honour of Ewelme (manorial records) • CH/L Legal business of Oxfordshire Clerks of the Peace • CH/P Pyrton Enclosure • CH/S Stokenchurch Turnpike Trust • CH/So South Stoke and Woodcote Enclosure • CH/V Watlington Estate of the Viret family • CH/XL Oxfordshire Election of 1862
This amounts to 1,270 catalogue entries now searchable on the Discovery website; (https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.u k/…/c60961b2-97a0-4…).
These catalogues join others of Oxfordshire History Centre collections already on Discovery (rather than on Heritage Search, our usual channel for making new catalogues more accessible) due to specifically-funded projects or initiatives.
Manage Your Collections also allows us, for the first time, to edit or add individual entries within our own online catalogues.
Photographs:
• Catalogue cards for the CH/S Stokenchurch Turnpike Trust collection • Orders and list of trustees from the meeting of the Stokenchurch Turnpike Trust, 28 May 1740
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Oxford City Council Archives
Since 2012 there has been a project funded by Oxford City Council and undertaken in collaboration with Oxfordshire History Centre and with advice from various interested groups and individuals in Oxford to identify, appraise and make available the hidden archives of Oxford City Council in the Town Hall basement.
Now some of this work is starting to come to fruition with the publication of the first ever online catalogues of Oxford City Council’s a...rchives. OCA1: Oxford Borough Council and Committee records from c1520 to 1974 and OCA2: Oxford Statutory Improvement Authorities (including Oxford Paving Commissioners, Oxford Local Board of Health and Folly Bridge Trustees) can now be examined in detail through Heritage Search.
These records, which can be inspected in the searchroom at Oxfordshire History Centre, contain the full history of the City Council’s main acts and decisions from the Tudor period until it stopped being a county borough quite distinct from the rest of the county in 1974. If you are interested in the physical environment of Oxford and attempts to clean it up before the twentieth century then you need look no further than OCA2.
Meanwhile the collaborative effort to reveal the City’s archives is continuing. Another enormous catalogue of City Engineer’s plans for improving roads, housing, public facilities, etc still held at the Town Hall will be released later in the year. And further catalogues of records held both at Oxfordshire History Centre and in the Town Hall will appear in the coming years.
Watch this space!
www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/heritagesearch
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Finding women in historical records
Have you ever thought of using manorial records for family or local history – especially before the 1841 Census? You may have found tracing your female ancestors difficult. They come and go in the records between marriages or only appear as widows. This has been a problem since the Middle Ages. When a family died out in the male line, heiresses carried their manors and estates to new families on marriage. It was also true for peasants: by c....1600 farms were generally leased for three lives. In the absence of male relatives, women’s names were added to the lease as births, marriages and deaths changed the family structure.
Manor court rolls and books record the names of the lord – or lady – of the manor who received the profits from the land, and the names of tenants who rented farms and grazing rights on the common fields and pastures. The lord of the manor had the right to prove tenants’ wills and a surprising number are found in manor court records. Manorial records can fill the gaps left by traditional local history sources: parish records, enclosure awards and tithe awards. Estate surveys, maps and lease books all record the names of tenants and provide details of family relationships.
#IWD2019
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The oldest published book in our local studies collections
Dating from 1575, this printed and bound copy of “Schola Thamensis ex fundatione Iohannis VVilliams Militis, domini Williams de Thame”, the statutes issued on the foundation of Lord Williams’ School in Thame, is the earliest printed book in our collections.
Sir John Williams, Lord Williams of Thame (c.1500-1559), made provision in his will for the foundation of a free school in Thame, which was to be endowed with inc...ome from his estates in Brill, Oakley, and Boarstall on the borders of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. The statutes which detail the endowments and governance of the school and its associated almshouse, were printed in London by Henry Bynneman.
The text is bound with English calfskin covering wooden boards. The endpapers consist of scraps of ‘recycled’ medieval manuscript. To keep the books secure, the copies were not chained to shelves, but were riveted to the desk - you can see the rivet holes in the four corners of the cover!
#worldbookday2019
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Oxford Preservation Trust
The early records (1927-1974) of Oxford Preservation Trust have recently been catalogued and are now searchable on Heritage Search under collection reference O21 (http://ow.ly/tqOK30nRPCg)
The Trust’s first offices in Oxford were at 3 Cornmarket Street, famed for the ‘Painted Room’ discovered by Ernest W. Attwood in 1927 during the refurbishment of the upper floor of the shop occupied by tailors Hookham &Co. The archive collection includes a photogra...ph of Sister K described only as “custodian of the painted room for 10 years”. If you can tell us more about her identity do get in touch.
Sir Arthur Evans’s work to protect and enhance the natural beauty of Boar’s Hill is recorded in the archive. The records include the radial map of the views to be seen from the vista point Jarn Mound that was constructed between 1929 and 1931. This early photograph of Jarn Mound is held in our photographic collections (www.pictureoxon.org.uk).
You can find out more about Oxford Preservation Trust at www.oxfordpreservation.org.uk
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We used part of our stocktake to improve our signage both inside and outside the building. The map design is taken from John Ogilby's road strip maps of 1675 and features the routes Faringdon to Henley and Banbury to Burford.

Oxfordshire Health Archives based here at Oxfordshire History Centre have just launched their redeveloped website. Check it out at http://www.oxfordshirehealtharchives.nhs. uk/

Oxfordshire History Centre’s collection of stereoscopic image cards from the 1860s has been digitised. The images are now available on our Picture Oxon website (www.pictureoxon.org.uk )
Stereoscopic photography developed from 1832, and stereoscopic cards were particularly popular between 1851 (when Sir David Brewster demonstrated his refracting stereoscope to Queen Victoria at the Great Exhibition) and the early 1870s. They could perhaps be considered as the tourist souveni...rs of the mid-19th century. Many of the images are instantly recognisable, though with subtle differences such as railings around the Martyrs’ Memorial; wide empty roads; and spacious views uncluttered by parked vehicles or bus stops. They offer a fascinating insight into what has – and hasn’t – changed in Oxford over 150 years.
Spiers and Son on the High Street published a series of at least 80 views of Oxford on stereoscopic card, taken by eminent photographers including P.H.Delamotte, whose photography students included Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and Joseph Cundall, a founder member of the Royal Photographic Society of London. This series included quite extensive background information on the reverse of the card about the buildings or views illustrated. Oxfordshire History Centre’s collection includes 14 images from this series. Oxford booksellers Thomas and George Shrimpton of Broad Street also published a series of views of Oxford on stereoscopic cards, of which we have 8. Other publishers represented include Wheeler & Day of Oxford and Negretti and Zambra of 59 Cornhill, London.
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Annual Stocktaking Closure 2019:
Please note that Oxfordshire History Centre will be closed to visitors from January 22 to February 2 inclusive.
We will re-open on Tuesday 5 February.

We are pleased to announce that The Genealogist has been added to the online resources available to visitors to Oxfordshire History Centre. Newly available resources include: Tithe maps and apportionments - a complete set of the TNA tithe and apportionments including Oxfordshire and Berkshire - searchable by name or location. You can find out more about the resources included in our Diamond subscription at www.thegenealogist.co.uk

Oxfordshire History Centre will close at 5pm on Friday 21st December and will re-open at 9am on Wednesday 2nd January. We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!