Street Character Assessment for 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 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 and that link Hayfield Road and the towpath (see the shaded area in the diagram, right). 3) Information about the 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 , 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 , 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

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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 , 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. Beyond the trees there is the mass of the new building at 1 Hayfield Road, with its plain close-board fence. 18) As you walk north past Aristotle House, there is a welcome glimpse through a gap to the canal side beyond, generally with a glimpse of one of the canal boats which are habitually moored there. 19) As you move further along the street the view is constrained by the formal lines of the houses, but the interest comes from the houses themselves, which appear very uniform until you look more closely at variations, for example in the stonework decorations above the front doors. The gaps between the blocks provide a welcome glimpse past the frontages to the green spaces beyond, which are the back gardens of Hayfield Road and , or the tree-lined canal. 20) Although there are unfortunately four roof windows (Velux style) facing the street, breaking the uniformity of the view, they are View over Aristotle Lane Bridge not especially obvious. There are no other structures such as dormer windows or solar panels to spoil the appearance. 21) Walking along the canal tow-path behind Hayfield Road gives a view of the backs of the western Hayfield Road houses. In contrast to the street side, this side is characterised by lots of greenery, from both the trees in the Trap Grounds, and the back gardens of the houses. The feeling on this side is much more rural, in complete

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View along the canal contrast to the predominantly urban feel of Hayfield Road itself. 22) The new blocks of flats on Frenchay Road east of the canal are rather over-bearing, being higher than most of the buildings in the area. As you walk south they fairly quickly give way to the pleasanter scale of the Hayfield Road buildings. 23) As you walk along the tow-path it is clear that there is tremendous variation in how the original houses have been extended into the back gardens. Number 57 has the only two-storey extension – the rest are one storey. At one time there was a dairy in the back garden. The roof line on the canal side is uniform, despite the addition of roof lights on numerous properties. Buildings

Around the South Junction 24) The hump-backed canal bridge in Aristotle Lane is a Grade II Listed Building, built in 1788 to a design by James Brindley, the architect responsible for the canal. It carries an ancient right of way to Port Meadow, known originally as ‘The Lower Way to Wolvercote’. 25) Bridge House, a residential building, was built in 2012 on a Canal bridge site which had previously been stables, and then a lean-to building. It has been designed to fit in with the overall feel of the conservation area. It is red brick roughly of the same colour as the other houses in the area, with stone lintels. The stonework in the gables has curved detailing which reflects the curves in the stonework of the nearby houses on the eastern side of Kingston Road and of 4-6 Hayfield Road. 26) Aristotle House is a stark office building opposite The Anchor. The appearance of the building is softened by the good screen of trees around the edge of the site

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Aristotle House is well screened which brings welcome greenery into the street scene, and hides the building to some extent. The site itself is relatively open, as the building is set back both from the canal and the street, and does not exceed the height of other buildings in the vicinity. The low boundary wall is partly of brick, and partly of very dilapidated stone. 27) Next to Aristotle House, 1 Hayfield Road is a hodge-podge of buildings divided into small flats. A building at the rear, just visible from the road, still has the shiny bricks that were used when the site was developed in the late 1970's. There are two facing Hayfield Road. The one on the right is from the 1970's, modified in 2013 to remove the shiny bricks. The one on the left was completed in 2013. Both have been made to mimic – although not match - the rest of the terraces of Hayfield Road. It is unfortunate that meter boxes have been allowed on the walls facing the street. There is also a rather large new building facing on to the car park of Aristotle House whose design includes some reference to the materials and detailing of the street's historic buildings but it is not considered to have satisfactorily achieved a harmonious relationship with the surroundings. For example although it is of red brick and has some stone detailing, the style is unlike anything else in the area. 28) The Anchor public house is a valued amenity in the area. It was built in 1937, and is typical of public houses built at that time. It is red brick with stone detailing, so to that extent it fits in with the general character of the area. Over the doors it has the original Hall's Brewery motif in metalwork, and the latest refurbishment, in 2013, has uncovered the Hall's Brewery tiles to the right (as you look at it) of the door on to Hayfield Road. The patio at the front contributes to the area's open feel. 29) The Aladdin garage next door is a fairly low Anchor door with Halls detailing building set well back from the street, which houses the works, with a yard in front. While the building is not particularly attractive, it has the merit that it does not impose itself on the street. On a gatepost is an attractive carving of Aladdin's lamp, by local sculptor Martin Jennings.

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Aladdin's Lamp, by Martin Jennings 30) At 4-6 Hayfield Road the ground floor is currently occupied by Bunters, which is a shop, with four flats above. The buildings were designed by H W Moore and erected in 1889, a year after the last of the Hayfield Road houses. It is somewhat larger than the rest of the street, but has similar features – red brick, slate roof, stone detailing. The stone detail over the door at each side of the building is identical to that over the door of some of the Hayfield Road houses.

The Hayfield Road houses 31) The houses of Hayfield Road are made up of well- proportioned two-storey buildings fronting directly onto the pavement with no front gardens. The houses are built in symmetrical pairs with intermittent side passageways.The houses are configured in blocks of eight or ten houses and at each gap Typical Hayfield Road Houses there are garden walls that run the length of the back gardens. They are made of red brick with stone detailing (frequently, as in the picture, now painted white) with wooden sash windows. The carved stonework detail over the doors was a signature detail of Moore and ties in with the other North Oxford houses in the suburb designed by him. The roofs are simple pitched front to back with chimney stacks that are generally sited between every pair of houses, topped with predominantly red clay chimney pots. Along the line of each party wall there is a sloping ridge of tiles decorated with a globe-shaped stone finial. The water drainage was originally via cast-iron gutters and down-pipes into cast- iron drains across the pavement. 32) The backs of the houses have been subject to many changes. Extensions have been built in a great many different styles. Many attic rooms have had skylight windows inserted in the rear-facing roofs.

Frenchay Road 33) The small part of Frenchay Road which is included in this character assessment covers only 25 and 27 Frenchay Road, the development of flats

Version 2.1 7 December 2014 Page 8 of between those two houses and the canal bridge, the canal bridge itself and the electricity sub-station opposite. 34) Both 25 and 27 Frenchay Road are slightly larger than the Hayfield Road houses; they are also designed by H W Moore, and are sightly later, having been built in 1900. They have the characteristic features of Moore's houses in the area: red brick, stone lintels with characteristic detailing and sash windows. However, the roofs are tiled rather than slate. They have small front gardens, which provides space for bay windows. The ends of the garden walls are marked by stone pillars, one of which is on Hayfield Road. 35) The development consisting mainly of flats is designed to fit in with these Frenchay Road houses. It is of roughly the same scale and of similar materials (brick, stone, tile). 36) The modern bridge over the canal half-way along Frenchay Road (at the northern end of Hayfield Road) was constructed in 1999 to replace the original lift bridge. The bridge leads to the Waterways housing development, which was built between 2000 and 2006 partly on the site of the British Motor Corporation's former Osberton Radiators Factory. Ambience 37) On the main part of Hayfield Road, it is extremely quiet most of the time; birds can be heard from the gardens and nearby Trap Grounds, and there is a distant rumble of trains at times. The road is only open to through traffic from pedestrians and cyclists, so cars and vans have to penetrate at a slow pace to the turning place at the bottom of the road and negotiate the courtesies of pulling by to let other drivers and cyclists pass. There is a peak of activity at the start and end of the school day, when many children travel down the road on their way to the various schools, and there are further peak when cycling commuters pass to and fro. 38) The southern end of the street is quite lively. The shop provides a destination for local workers and residents alike. There is often coming and going associated with the Aladdin garage, the pub, and the office workers at Aristotle House. 39) Along the canal towpath it is generally peaceful, though there are people pursuing leisure activities in a semi-rural setting, including walking, running, cycling and fishing.

Version 2.1 7 December 2014 Page 9 of Appendix: Changes in the Hayfield Road Houses 40) Although the houses in Hayfield Road were designed and built to a uniform design, there has been over a century of maintenance and improvement, so that there is now a surprising amount of variation in the buildings. This appendix shows some of the variation that has occurred. 41) Some of the variation was planned from the start. The mouldings in the

stonework over the front doors of the houses varied from the beginning. 42) Although originally the stonework would have been unpainted, many of the houses have had their stonework painted, usually in plain white. 43) Front doors have also been changed over the years. There is now a variety of types.

Version 2.1 7 December 2014 Page 10 of 44) The door on the left is the original design, slightly altered to include glazed windows. The other two doors are modern replacements. The middle door did not fit the doorway until a piece of wood was fitted across the top of the doorway. 45) The large windows would originally have been sash windows with 6 panes of glass per window - 6 over 6, as in the first picture below.

Version 2.1 7 December 2014 Page 11 of 46) One quite common change has been to remove the glazing bars so that the sash window is now 1 over 1 – the second picture top right above. As can be seen from the bottom two pictures, a variety of alternative replacement windows have been installed, detracting from the overall appearance of the street. 47) The horns on the sash windows were originally a simple chamfered design. Some later replacements have more ornate horns. See the photos below. The left hand photo shows the simple design, the right hand photo a more ornate alternative.

Version 2.1 7 December 2014 Page 12 of 48) The small windows adjacent to the doors have also suffered over the years.

49) An original window is on the left, later replacements to the right. 50) In the gaps between the blocks are dividing walls topped with round bricks characteristic of the Victorian suburb. Some of these walls have been rebuilt over the years, sadly not all of them to match the original pattern.

The centre picture shows the original brickwork. Note the angled bricks on the

Version 2.1 7 December 2014 Page 13 of shoulders, rather than the cut off bricks from the picture on the left. 51) The roofs are also not unscathed, in that the decorative finial (the stone globe) is often now missing, and four houses have had roof windows fitted.

52) The top right picture also shows how the decorative lip at the top of the chimney has deteriorated, and how replacement of the red clay chimney pots has not always been sympathetic. Future developments in Hayfield RoadThis character assessment documents many of the features of Hayfield Road which make a positive contribution to the character of the street, and which it is therefore important to protect in order to preserve this character. The following list summarises the important features which it is desirable to maintain as and when future development occurs.  The use of red brick and slate roofing in keeping with the existing colours and style.

Version 2.1 7 December 2014 Page 14 of  Preservation of the stone-washed or white-painted lintels.   Windows and doors which are sympathetic to the original Victorian sash windows, by use of traditional materials and styles which echo the existing window styles.Original garden walls with their typical North Oxford red brick with half round coping.The cast-iron gutters across the pavements, which contribute to the street scene.The height of the buildings in the street is generally low level and it is an important feature that there are no over-bearing buildings.  The turning circle at the south end of the street is essential because of the (equally essential for traffic calming) closed end of that street. 53) Some characteristics of the street have deteriorated over time, which detracts from the overall appearance. It would be beneficial if the deterioration could be halted or reversed. For example:  The stone ledge detail on the chimney stacks has frequently crumbled, and the original red clay pots have been replaced by a jumble of styeks of pot. Restoration would be a welcome enhancement to the roof- scape.  Similarly the tiled partition ridges on the rooves with their decorative stone filials have in some places deteriorated markedly.  On one or two houses, roof lights have been fitted to the street facing side. This has spoiled the roof-scape, and further rooflights on the street side would be detrimental.  Some of the side passage gaps have been filled with shed structures and gates that block the view, which cuts off some welcome views of greenery from the back gardens. 54) The following books proved invaluable as sources for most of the historical information: North Oxford by T. Hinchcliffe Hayfield Road: Nine Hundred Years of an Oxford Neighbourhood by C. Robinson and E Buxton

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