The Secret Life of Headington Quarry: People’S History in the Field
4 The Secret Life of Headington Quarry: People’s History in the Field Raphael Samuel (second from right) and History Workshop students outside Ruskin, Oxford 1980 Raphael Samuel Archive, Bishopsgate Institute, London, courtesy of Alison Light and the Raphael Samuel Estate . 131 THE HISTORIES OF RAPHAEL SAMUEL Masons Arms pub, Quarry School Place Road, Headington Quarry, Oxfordshire, 1969 In the summer of ’69, the unobserved-observer, quietly ensconced in a snug in the Masons Arms pub, would have witnessed an intriguing spectacle. An unusual visitor had joined the usual array of Quarry drinkers that year. This was long before the days when village pubs arrayed their exteriors with hanging baskets and served gourmet seasonal lunches. The Masons Arms was still very much a ‘local’ place where newcomers were noticed. And this ‘stranger’ would have been particularly noticeable. This stranger was a historian, a tutor at the workers’ college, in Oxford city. He and some of students had been visiting the Quarry for some time now. They all seemed to be absolutely fascinated by the place. On this occasion the newcomer was alone, conducting another one of his interviews. Whilst casually dressed, scruffy even, everything about him, from the poise with which he held himself to his educated accent betrayed him as different.1 Even his name, ‘Raphael Samuel’, would have sounded exotic and different. Not from Oxford. Not a working man.2 Yet so sincere was his interest that slowly the Masons Arms’ locals had started to share with him their most prized memories and secrets. What might those old Quarry boys have made of all this? Perched in their accustomed spots, hands rested on pint glasses or fingers nimbly rolling cigarettes, listening solemnly with rapt concentration as one or other of them recited their remembrances and spun out the old tales to the eager delight of this stranger and his cumbersome recording equipment.3 Perhaps they were a little suspicious, unused to finding so receptive an audience amongst the younger generations.
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