OxfordLocal

Oxford's Blue Plaques

Where Tolkien lived, where Bannister ran, and where the marmalade was made

Most major cities mark the former homes of notable residents with small round plaques. In London the scheme is run by English Heritage; in Oxford it is run by the Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board, an independent voluntary body that has installed close to a hundred plaques across the city and the wider county. Each plaque is privately fundraised, agreed with the building's current owner, and unveiled at a small public ceremony.

Below is a selection of the most rewarding plaques to seek out — grouped roughly by area. The full list is maintained by the board and continues to grow.

Literary Oxford

  • J.R.R. Tolkien — 20 Northmoor Road, North Oxford. Tolkien lived here from 1930 to 1947 and wrote most of The Hobbit and substantial parts of The Lord of the Rings in the upstairs study.
  • C.S. Lewis — The Kilns, Lewis Close, Headington Quarry. Lewis's home from 1930 until his death in 1963 and the inspiration for several locations in the Narnia books. Now a study centre that can be visited by appointment.
  • Dame Iris Murdoch — 30 Charlbury Road, North Oxford. The philosopher-novelist's long-time home with her husband John Bayley.
  • Walter Pater — 2 Bradmore Road, North Oxford. The Brasenose Fellow and aesthete; his sister Clara, women's-education pioneer, is commemorated on the same plaque. (Pater is also buried at Holywell Cemetery.)
  • Elizabeth Bowen — The Coach House, The Croft, Headington.

Science and medicine

  • Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin — 94 Woodstock Road. The Nobel Prize-winning crystallographer who determined the structure of insulin lived here from the 1950s.
  • Sir Isaiah Berlin — Headington House, Old High Street, Headington. The philosopher and historian of ideas; founding president of Wolfson College.
  • Sir Charles Sherrington — 9 Chadlington Road. Nobel-laureate neurophysiologist.
  • Sir Hans Krebs — 27 Abberbury Road, Iffley. Nobel-laureate biochemist; the Krebs cycle bears his name.
  • Penicillin — two event plaques: development 1938–1941 at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology on South Parks Road, and first treatment 1941 at the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter on Woodstock Road. (See also Oxford for literary pilgrims for the wartime context.)
  • Norman Heatley — 12 Oxford Road, Old Marston. The Dunn School biochemist who devised the back-extraction method that made the penicillin programme possible.

Sport and public life

  • Roger Bannister — event plaque at the Iffley Road Track marking the first sub-four-minute mile, 6 May 1954.
  • Ronnie Barker — 23 Church Cowley Road, East Oxford. Childhood home of the actor and comedian.
  • Sarah Cooper — 83 High Street. Maker of the first Oxford Marmalade, sold from her husband Frank's shop on the High from 1874.
  • Joan Murray (née Clarke) — 7 Larkfields, Headington Quarry. Bletchley Park cryptanalyst, briefly engaged to Alan Turing, later a distinguished numismatist.
  • Ivy Williams — 12 King Edward Street. The first woman called to the Bar in England and Wales (1922), and the first to teach English law at a British university.
  • Sir James Murray — 78 Banbury Road. The primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary; the famous "Scriptorium" stood in the garden behind.
  • William Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield — 16 James Street, East Oxford. Birthplace of the Cowley car-maker and Oxford's greatest 20th-century philanthropist.

Local curiosities

  • Revd W. A. Spooner — 11 Keble Road. Warden of New College, whose tongue-tied transpositions ("a half-warmed fish") gave English the word spoonerism.
  • Anthony Wood — Postmasters' Hall, Merton Street. The 17th-century antiquary whose diaries and topography of Oxford are the foundation document for the city's modern history.
  • English Civil War — Surrender of Oxford, 1646 — Cromwell House, 17 Mill Lane, Old Marston. The house where the surrender of Royalist Oxford was negotiated.
  • Cutteslowe Walls — 34 Aldrich Road. Marker for the notorious 1934–1959 brick walls built to separate a private estate from neighbouring council housing.
  • Jane Burden — St Helen's Passage. Pre-Raphaelite model — wife of William Morris, lover of Dante Gabriel Rossetti — born in this lane in 1839.

Walking routes

Three clusters lend themselves to a short walk:

  • North Oxford literary — Tolkien (20 Northmoor), Hodgkin (94 Woodstock), Murdoch (30 Charlbury), Pater (2 Bradmore), Murray (78 Banbury). Roughly two miles end-to-end through some of Oxford's grandest Victorian villa streets.
  • Headington — Lewis (The Kilns), Berlin (Headington House), Joan Murray (Larkfields). Pair with a visit to Wolvercote Cemetery to the north for the Tolkien grave.
  • City centre — Cooper (83 High), Wood (Postmasters' Hall), Williams (12 King Edward), Spooner (11 Keble). Easily combined with a tour of the colleges along the High.

Related guides

Plaque list compiled from the Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board's published register. The board continues to install new plaques; if you spot one missing here, let us know.