Catherine Robinson, a local historian in Hayfield Road, has kindly provided us with copies of maps of the Polstead Road area. The copies are now available on the website, and this post introduces them. Maps offer a point of view. They are not value-free, complete representations. They will exclude matters considered irrelevant to the mapper’s purpose. Failure to find an expected feature may indicate that the mapper was not interested, gave it low priority, or lacked the required technical ability. These maps, for example, do not show elevation, slopes, or vegetation, or indicate areas of historical interest. Remember that when looking at them.
Table of Contents
Introduction.
Military success depends on understanding the features of the land and how they interrelate. Military needs drove advances in mapping, and the UK Ordnance Survey began in Scotland to support the suppression of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion.
Building housing estates also requires accurate maps, which are usually valuable and retained, thereby documenting changes in land use. These maps illustrate the delay between an initial idea-“we should build houses here”-and the construction and sale of the houses.
Catherine Robinson has shared the maps she used when writing Hayfield Road – Then and Now, her recently updated history of Hayfield Road, the road that runs north from the western end of Polstead Road. [Copies are for sale at the Hayfield Road Deli.] We will present each map in chronological order and provide a few comments on each.
1827 sketch map.
This map below was drawn by Catherine Robinson many years ago. She based it on John Allen’s map of the parish of St. Giles, commissioned by St John’s College and stored in the College archives. [To see it in a new tab, to refer to it, click here.]
The canal is evident, coloured turquoise, and Thomas Hewlett owned the land on its east side. The lane heading north beside his land is now Hayfield Road.
Aristotle Lane runs from the Hutt over the canal towards Port Meadow, crossing streams. “The Hutt” was the name of the original pub, built in or before 1700 on the site now occupied by the present-day Anchor. The landlord from 1721 to 1778 was William Heyfield, and the pub became known as Heyfield’s Hutt until it was officially renamed as The Anchor in the 1830s (although it was affectionately and more commonly known as Dolley’s Hut, as a nod to William Dolley, the landlord from 1851 until his death in 1877). The Anchor pub, as we know it today, was built in 1936.
“Thirteen Acre Piece” is the name of the land on which Polstead Road was eventually built. A track on the south side of the land leads to “Gallows Baulk Road”, which we now know as the eastern section of St Margaret’s Road. The name refers to the civic gallows established in the 13th century at the point where that minor road met the Banbury Road. The gallows were dismantled in about 1787, and eventually the whole road was renamed Rackham’s Lane after a cottage, Rackham’s Cottage, at the Woodstock Road junction.
1832 Enclosure Map of the Parish of St Giles
An Ordnance Survey map from 1832, placed just below this paragraph, shows the parish of St Giles, surrounded by the red line. A more detailed map, available online by clicking here, records who owned the many different parcels of land within the parish. Thirteen-Acre Piece, located north of the Hutt Road, was owned by St John’s College and the trustees of the late Duke of Marlborough. “The Hutt Road” is the western section of present-day St Margaret’s Road.
1872 St John’s College maps
The origin of this map is unknown, but we assume it was commissioned by St John’s College or a developer. The two halves are from a single sheet.
The northbound railway is visible to the west, with the old bridge recently replaced by a large iron structure. The canal is named the Oxford-Birmingham Canal. The track running north from the Hutt, named as Hayfield Road on the map, but not yet developed for housing, led to a bridge over the canal. In 1900, a heavy-metal, manually operated drawbridge was installed over the canal; it was demolished in 2000 when Frenchay Road was extended into Waterside. The western end of St Margaret’s Road, usually referred to as ‘Rackham’s Lane’ until the church was built in 1884, appears as ‘the Hutt Road’ on this map.
The map shows where the College planned to build roads, including Polstead, Hayfield, Chalfont, and Frenchay. It also shows that a few houses had been built on the west side of Woodstock Road. Interestingly, neither Polstead Road nor Chalfont Road was intended to be straight; both still have curves.
1876 Ordnance Survey map.
This map is deliberately on its side, to maintain a constant North-South axis across all maps. You may need to zoom in to see details (+ button). It shows that, despite the 1872 outline plan, no houses had yet been constructed on Thirteen-Acre Piece. The lane, now Hayfield Road, turned left and crossed the canal at Bridge 239; it appears to be heading towards Wolvercote Common. The coal wharf along the east side of the canal is recorded.
The future Polstead Road land appears to consist of plots, possibly allotments; it does not appear to be an orchard. Both ends of the future St Margaret’s Road have been renamed Rackham’s Lane. Houses had been built along Kingston Road as far as Farndon Place (now Farndon Road).
1899 Ordnance Survey map
This map is from a single larger sheet covering the St Giles Parish. It shows that building work had progressed north to the existing St John’s Sports Ground (the pavilion is noted). On the other hand, some of the ground was still allotments, not built on.
All the houses on Polstead Road were recorded, as well as the St Margaret’s Institute, which is best seen in map-3: the white space 343-G66 is where the Anchor car park is now, and the building bisected by a fold in the map must be the Institute with a large garden, now covered by the Hall.
St Margaret’s Church was complete, and the Anchor Public House is identified. Opposite the Anchor is the canal wharf, a centre for coal distribution in north Oxford from 1789 until its closure in 1957. The large building shown at the south end was Navigation House, the head office, built in the 1860s, which also supplied beer to the canal boatmen. It was demolished in 1964 and replaced by offices that are currently occupied by Makespace Oxfordshire.
Conclusion
These maps show that St John’s College was planning to develop the land at least 25 years before Polstead Road was built, and they list many roads by name and location. They also show Aristotle Lane, a track that has existed since 1600 or earlier. In June 1644, during the civil war, Charles I escaped from the besieged city with 2,500 musketeers, stealing out of Oxford by night along Aristotle Lane, then across Port Meadow and the Thames en route to Burford. The 1832 map also shows that a track heading north crossed the canal where the Frenchay Road Bridge now stands. The canal and railway have been present for many years. The Anchor Public House replaced the Hutt as a pub.
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