Hayfield Road
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Street Character Assessment for Hayfield Road Oxford 1) This street character statement has been prepared by the Hayfield Road Residents' Association in partnership with Oxford City Council to provide evidence of the character and appearance of Hayfield Road as a part of the North Oxford Victorian Suburb Conservation Area. The statement was prepared by a subcommittee of the residents' association between Spring 2013 and Spring 2014 and has been amended following consultation with local residents and businesses undertaken in Summer 2014. The character assessment will be presented to the City Council's West Area Planning Committee for endorsement as supplementary to the Draft North Oxford Victorian Suburb Conservation Area Appraisal and should be consulted with regard to applications for planning permission affecting the area to which it refers. 2) The assessment includes Hayfield Road and its immediate neighbourhood; the canal towpath to the west of Hayfield Road and the parts of Frenchay Road and Aristotle Lane that link Hayfield Road and the towpath (see the shaded area in the diagram, right). 3) Information about the Trap Grounds to the west of the canal tow-path can be found in the Trap Grounds character assessment. History 4) Hayfield Road is part of an old route from Oxford to Wolvercote, shown on Benjamin Cole's map of 1720 as “The Upper Way to Wolvercote”. A nearby well, known as Aristotle’s Well, on the corner of Aristotle Lane, was recorded in the seventeenth century as a destination for scholars walking into the countryside from Oxford. From at least 1718 refreshment was available at Heyfield's Hutt, a hostelry which eventually became known as Dolley’s Hut, located where The Anchor public house (built in 1937) stands today. Version 2.1 7 December 2014 Page 1 of 5) Next to the site of The Anchor were stables, dating back at least to the eighteenth century when horse racing took place on the nearby Port Meadow. The stables evolved into a hansom cab business, and since the 1930s a garage, now Aladdin, has operated on the site. Next to Aladdin at 4-6 Hayfield Road stands a larger building which currently houses the local newsagent and delicatessen, Bunters, on the site of what were two shops built in 1890. Above the shop are six flats and behind are garages. 6) Opposite Aladdin and Bunters, beyond the office block known as Aristotle House, is the Oxford Canal, which links Oxford with Coventry, and which reached Hayfield Road in 1789. There was a working coal wharf at the southern end of Hayfield Road from then until the 1950s. An office building, Aristotle House, was built on the site of the wharf in 1973. In the late 1970s four flats were built, on the site of the wharf adjacent to 3 Hayfield Road. These flats have since been expanded to six in number. 7) From the 1860s, St John's College started to develop what is now known as the North Oxford Victorian Suburb. The College wished to control the overall development carefully, to ensure that many of the houses were first class so as to enhance the overall value of the area. In general St John’s reserved the eastern part of the suburb for the largest, best and most expensive houses, but the college also wished to develop smaller houses for working people, and these were located towards the west of the development. 8) Between February 1886 and October 1888 the Oxford Industrial and Provident Land and Building Society completed the building of “model artisans dwellings” (all of the current houses in Hayfield Road) to a design by H Wilkinson Moore, St John's College architect, on land leased from the College. They were mainly leased to tradespeople and sub-let to manual workers and their families. 9) From 1963 the North Oxford Victorian Suburb was designated as a conservation area with all that implies for protection and preservation. The Hayfield Road houses are on the western edge of the conservation area and are among the smallest in the suburb. Tenants of St John’s continued to lease the houses until the leases expired or were sold as freehold in the later half of the 20th century. Even into the 1980s a good number of the front doors retained the uniform brown allocated by St John’s, and many houses retained their original footprints. With rising house prices and affluence, many of the houses have been refurbished and extended at the back. In 1985 the permanent closure of the street to cars and motorcycles at the Version 2.1 7 December 2014 Page 2 of southern end produced a very significant change for the better, putting an end to the heavy lorry traffic that shook the foundations, and reducing the noise and exhaust fumes that used to penetrate beyond the house fronts. The street is now safe enough to form part of a designated cycle route for the many children who travel down it to the local primary and secondary schools. General character 10) Hayfield Road is in keeping with the rest of the conservation area in that its houses are made of red brick and have slate roofs and stone detailing but it has a uniform character that sets it apart from the surrounding streets. 11) The view down the road has a pleasing harmonious rhythm of vertical chimney stacks counter-balanced by the Hayfield Road from the North strongly horizontal unity of the roof-line and of the stone-work lintels over doors and windows.The view is enhanced by a gentle curve to the street that is subtle enough to go unnoticed at first glance. The uniformity of the facades make the variations from house to house all the more striking, notably in the individual ornamental stone carvings of fruits or plants set over each front door, but also in the idiosyncratic alterations made to doors, windows, downpipes, paint colours etc. 12) Unlike the predominantly leafy appearance of most of the Suburb, there is little greenery in the street. Consequently the residents of Hayfield Road particularly value what prospects of greenery there are.At the northern end these are afforded by views of the trees and shrubbery seen cascading over walls from the gardens of the corner houses on both Frenchay Road and Version 2.1 7 December 2014 Page 3 of Welcome greenery Hayfield Road, then along the road itself by glimpses into back gardens at the gaps between blocks of houses, and at the southern end by the two birches at the road closure. This southern end of the street, where there are the few non-residential buildings, has a more open aspect which is especially enhanced by the rows of trees in the car park at Aristotle House which blossom early and offer a pleasurable relief from the urban character of the street. 13) The small part of Frenchay Road which leads from Hayfield Road over the canal bridge and on to the canal tow-path feels a little more open because the road is wider, and the houses have small front gardens. The buildings are a mixture: 25 and 27 Frenchay Road are also by Moore, with similar detailing, and date from 1900, though they are larger than the houses on Hayfield Road. Then there are blocks of flats from the turn of the present century built on the site of a builder’s yard; on the other side of Frenchay Road is a side view of 1 Bainton Road, built 1912, and the electricity sub-station. There are steps on the left leading down from the road bridge to a small parcel of land from which the old tilt bridge crossed over the canal before the modern bridge was built. There is a right of way over this land to the back gardens of 71 and 73 Hayfield Road. 14) The canal tow-path has a very different feel from the rest of the area because there is so much greenery, both from the view into the back gardens of the western side of Hayfield Road, and alongside the canal and beyond into the Trap Grounds. 15) It is possible to see that the street once had stone kerbs, now replaced by concrete. Old cobbles are visible in places in the gutters, though tarmac has generally hidden them. There are cast-iron gutters running across the pavement from the down-pipes between the houses. There is a traditional post box outside Bunters, but otherwise the street furniture is a mix of generally undistinguished styles: a clutter of street signs, modern green street lamps, and several plain metal telecommunications boxes sited outside Aristotle House and 4-6 Hayfield Road. Over time these things will need to be replaced, and it would be good if they could be replaced with designs which better suit the area, particularly the street lamps. Views 16) On entering the street from the south, there are pleasant views of the Aristotle Lane canal bridge overhung by verdant willow trees, with Wytham Woods in the distance. Version 2.1 7 December 2014 Page 4 of 17) Looking north from Aristotle Lane past The Anchor one sees the side view of 4-6 Hayfield Road, still bearing the faded lettering dating from the time when the building was a furniture shop. To the left is a welcome pair of trees across the road, where it is closed to traffic. Further left are the trees lining the eastern and northern boundaries of Aristotle House. These trees are important because they are the only natural elements in what is otherwise predominantly a view of unrelieved red brick buildings.