By OISE Oxford tutor Kit Villiers
We're sometimes told that we're moving towards a classless society. That might be true in Britain today, but it certainly wasn't a little earlier in my lifetime, if events in north Oxford in the 1950s are anything to go by. In 1934, at the instigation of a developer of private housing nearby, high and forbidding walls were erected between the new development and a City Council housing estate which bordered it to the east. Apparently the developer thought that having 'slums' next door would adversely affect his sales! Amazingly the walls remained in place right up to 1959 (long after the houses on the 'middle-class' side of the barrier were sold), when the City Council finally removed them.
Where are we talking about? Going north from the Summertown shops you pass first Wentworth Road and then Carlton Road on the right, shortly before you reach the Cutteslowe Roundabout. These two are the 'fancy' streets named by the developer; but proceed down either of them and you'll be surprised to note that for little apparent reason the street names suddenly change, before you get to the junction with Jackson Road. Wentworth becomes Aldrich, and Carlton becomes Wolsey. 2 metre high brick walls used to block these roads completely, preventing even pedestrian passage to the other side.
As a child, the walls were a great mystery to me. There were rumours of the most awful folk living on the other side: they had crew-cuts, were armed with bicycle chains and - most intriguingly - wore something called 'drain-pipe' trousers. And that was just the women! Or possibly the men - we never knowingly met any of the denizens of the sealed off estate, so we didn't really know. Of course the key word here is 'knowingly'. I'm sure we mingled perfectly happily without realising it. After all, the estate was not prison; one obvious way in (and out) was along the A40, as not even the snobbiest developer was able to build a wall across that.
Our family (and doubtless many others) were forced to use this route, as one of the anomalies of the situation was that the only primary school in the area was on the 'wrong' side of the wall, and children such as my brother had to walk down the busy A40 just to get to Cutteslowe Primary School each morning, usually accompanied by one of my parents.
The walls were notorious, and tourists came from miles around to see them. They proved very hard to get rid of. A tank knocked down one in the war, but it was rebuilt. Finally the council had to buy the land they were built on, and knocked them down in September 1959. They would have liked to have changed the street names too, but this was a step too far.
So, if you are interested, stroll down Carlton Road one day and see if you can still see any change. Actually there is a plaque there now, put up by the Blue Plaque Society. This was done as recently as 2006, showing how interest in this bit of rather unfortunate bit of Oxford's local history still continues.
We're sometimes told that we're moving towards a classless society. That might be true in Britain today, but it certainly wasn't a little earlier in my lifetime, if events in north Oxford in the 1950s are anything to go by. In 1934, at the instigation of a developer of private housing nearby, high and forbidding walls were erected between the new development and a City Council housing estate which bordered it to the east. Apparently the developer thought that having 'slums' next door would adversely affect his sales! Amazingly the walls remained in place right up to 1959 (long after the houses on the 'middle-class' side of the barrier were sold), when the City Council finally removed them.
Where are we talking about? Going north from the Summertown shops you pass first Wentworth Road and then Carlton Road on the right, shortly before you reach the Cutteslowe Roundabout. These two are the 'fancy' streets named by the developer; but proceed down either of them and you'll be surprised to note that for little apparent reason the street names suddenly change, before you get to the junction with Jackson Road. Wentworth becomes Aldrich, and Carlton becomes Wolsey. 2 metre high brick walls used to block these roads completely, preventing even pedestrian passage to the other side.
As a child, the walls were a great mystery to me. There were rumours of the most awful folk living on the other side: they had crew-cuts, were armed with bicycle chains and - most intriguingly - wore something called 'drain-pipe' trousers. And that was just the women! Or possibly the men - we never knowingly met any of the denizens of the sealed off estate, so we didn't really know. Of course the key word here is 'knowingly'. I'm sure we mingled perfectly happily without realising it. After all, the estate was not prison; one obvious way in (and out) was along the A40, as not even the snobbiest developer was able to build a wall across that.
Our family (and doubtless many others) were forced to use this route, as one of the anomalies of the situation was that the only primary school in the area was on the 'wrong' side of the wall, and children such as my brother had to walk down the busy A40 just to get to Cutteslowe Primary School each morning, usually accompanied by one of my parents.
The walls were notorious, and tourists came from miles around to see them. They proved very hard to get rid of. A tank knocked down one in the war, but it was rebuilt. Finally the council had to buy the land they were built on, and knocked them down in September 1959. They would have liked to have changed the street names too, but this was a step too far.
So, if you are interested, stroll down Carlton Road one day and see if you can still see any change. Actually there is a plaque there now, put up by the Blue Plaque Society. This was done as recently as 2006, showing how interest in this bit of rather unfortunate bit of Oxford's local history still continues.
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