The long road southeast from the Plain towards the village of Iffley — best known as the home of the running track where [Roger Bannister](/people/roger-bannister/) broke the four-minute mile on 6 May 1954, and now the A4158 spine of east Oxford.
Iffley Road is the long arterial spine of south-east Oxford. It begins at the Plain — the roundabout immediately east of Magdalen Bridge, where the High Street ends — and runs south-east towards the historic village of Iffley, taking in much of east Oxford's residential terrace before it changes name and continues as Henley Avenue, then Rose Hill, on its way out to the ring road. The whole route from the Plain to the ring-road junction carries the A4158 designation. In the nineteenth century the entire stretch was simply called Henley Road, since it pointed at Henley-on-Thames; the modern name only attached itself in stages as the city absorbed the older village.
A short walk south of the Plain, on the east side of the road, stands the Iffley Road Track — the Oxford University running track that, on 6 May 1954, became the site of the first sub-four-minute mile in athletic history when Roger Bannister ran 3:59.4 in front of a small crowd. A blue plaque on the track-entrance wall commemorates the run; the track itself, still in use as the university's main athletics venue, has since been resurfaced more than once but keeps the original oval line.
Immediately south of the track is the Iffley Road rugby ground, where the Oxford University rugby club has played its home fixtures since the late nineteenth century. The ground hosts most of the university's RFC matches through the season, including warm-up games for the annual Varsity fixture at Twickenham.
A short walk further south is Greyfriars, a Capuchin Franciscan priory that formerly functioned as one of Oxford's Permanent Private Halls. The friary chapel remains active. Higher up at No. 91, the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics — an independent research body — has its base in a converted terrace house.
A handful of pubs punctuate the road, most clustered at the Plain end. The Cape of Good Hope stands directly on the Plain itself at No. 1 Iffley Road. Further south, the Cricketers' Arms was rebranded as The Mad Hatter cocktail bar in 2013 and keeps that identity now, while the Fir Tree Tavern remains a more traditional local nearer Iffley Turn.
The street features in Emerald Fennell's 2023 film Saltburn, whose first act is set in a fictional Oxford college. The two leads — played as Oliver Quick and Felix Catton — share their first scene when Felix is stranded by a punctured tyre and Oliver lends him a working bicycle so he can make a tutorial on Iffley Road. The encounter sets up the friendship that drives the rest of the film.
The track is at the Iffley Road Track, an Oxford University athletics venue on the east side of Iffley Road, a short distance south of the Plain (the Magdalen Bridge end). A blue plaque on the track-entrance wall commemorates Roger Bannister's sub-four-minute mile, run on 6 May 1954.
They are different sections of the same arterial route (the A4158). Iffley Road runs from the Plain to Iffley Turn; from there southwards the road becomes Henley Avenue, then Rose Hill, before reaching the ring road. In the nineteenth century the whole route was called Henley Road, after Henley-on-Thames.
The Iffley Road rugby ground is the home venue of Oxford University Rugby Football Club. It is not generally open as a tourist site, but tickets are sold for fixtures during the rugby season and the ground hosts visiting club teams as well as university matches.
Historical names: Henley Road
Sources: Wikipedia: Iffley Road · Wikidata: Iffley Road (Q5991175) · OpenStreetMap: Iffley Road, Oxford
