Once dominated by the great monastic buildings of Osney Abbey, the meadows of West Oxford became the site of a railway suburb from the 1850s. Houses were built on the low-lying fields beside Botley Road, creating the new communities of Osney Town, New Osney and New Botley.Flooding was such a problem in Osney Town that the area was soon nicknamed Frogs' Island.
The railways were major employers and other businesses such as Kingerlee's, the Oxford Co-op, Hunt and Broadhurst Ltd., and the Alden Press became established in the growing neighbourhood. Oxford had its own power station in New Osney between 1892 and 1968. The Thames flood plain has checked the development of West Oxford in the 20th century but the Osney Mead Industrial Estate occupied the former Payne's Field in the 1960s. Away from the busy Botley Road, however, the area remains surprisingly rural and Binsey is a magically remote corner of the modern City.
Malcom's book uses the memories of local people and other sources to look behind the mask of today's traffic jams and reveal the history of this fascinating area. It recalls a time when boys played football on the Botley Road and women in Osney Town sat outside their homes and knitted on summer evenings; when children learned to swim at Tumbling Bay and the smell of Frank Cooper's Oxford Marmalade wafted through the streets. A time also when many people grew vegetables on local allotments to make ends meet and the children might sleep three to a bed in cold houses.
Malcom Graham's Changing faces of West Oxford is available from the bookshop in the foyer of the City Library.
