Oxford Brookes University started life in the Taylor Institution in 1865, and the Headington campus was formally opened in 1963. But from 1894 to 1959 the heart of the institution was a modest building in St Ebbe’s.
The Oxford City Technical
School moved to new premises on the site of the old Bluecoat School for Boys in
Church Street in 1894. The new building was designed
by Harry Wilkinson Moore, the architect behind the covered bridge over Logic Lane and many North Oxford houses. He also designed two
houses on Pullens Lane which were later part of Oxford Brookes: The
Vines and Cotuit Hall.
Church Street, St Ebbe's by John Henry Brookes, 1954
The Church Street building did not meet the school’s needs for long. Just five years after the move, the Department of Science and Art declared the site inadequate and threatened to pull its funding.
As the school continued to
grow more and more premises were found and borrowed all over the city to accommodate classes.
Hopes that a new college would be built on Cowley Road were dashed by the outbreak of war in 1939, although a reduced scheme went ahead, and by the 1940s an inspection report
listed nineteen separate teaching locations.
By then the Church Street
building had seriously deteriorated. Reginald Grimshaw, who was appointed as
head of the School of Art after the war, remembers being allocated a desk: "Naturally, as the last to
come I had the bit where there was an uncontrollable drip from the skylight
above during wet weather and a bucket beside my chair was essential."
Barbara Cleary attended the
Oxford School of Technology, Art and Commerce in Church Street from 1949 to 1951. She also went on to
work for the school on its Cowley Road site, and would occasionally provide
cover in Church Street. She remembers the cold in those buildings gave her
chilblains: "It was not good for typing on typewriters then – so many people
remarked on my swollen hands, so embarrassing!”
Hilary Stenning was a student
at the School of Art during those years, and has fond memories of St Ebbe's:
“The art school then down in
St Ebbe’s was wonderful. Terrific character the whole of that St Ebbe’s area.
Still quite slummy I suppose one would say, and very run down. But the building
itself was a great gloomy-looking brick building and you went in through an
archway, and I remember the caretaker there who ran a little shop for students
to buy paper and pencils and things, into a courtyard, and rather a jumble of
buildings.”
By the time she left the school in 1954 the foundation stone for the Headington buildings had
been laid and Cheney School had moved out of Church Street to Cheney Lane.
Cheney School moves out of Church Street
The School of Art was the last department to move out, in 1959. Despite the building's poor state
of repair, there was real affection for the place and great sadness at leaving
it behind.
Patrick Jeffs, who started
studying at the School of Art in 1958, remembers the Church Street premises
fondly:
“St Ebbe’s was a really old
decrepit building, which we loved. Bits were dropping off. I remember in the
lithography room, for instance, that you could see the water ooze up between
the wooden blocks when you walked across the room... The student common room
was another decrepit old building, and it was all so lovely to us because you
felt so free and you didn’t feel like you were going to spoil anything.”
By contrast the new, state-of-the-art studios in Headington felt intimidating until students had made their mark.
By contrast the new, state-of-the-art studios in Headington felt intimidating until students had made their mark.
This last move spelt the end
of the Church Street building. Redevelopment of St Ebbe’s had already started,
and it was earmarked for demolition, alongside much of the neighbourhood. The
Westgate Centre stands in its place, with Pennyfarthing Place the street’s only
remnant.
Reginald Grimshaw, the head
of the School of Art, wrote a moving piece for the local press to mark the end
of an era:
“Let them take care as they
go about knocking down the School of Art. Already there are signs that the old
building resents being condemned. … After all,
the old lady has bred some noble progeny and had some cause to feel slighted…. They
all grew up and left, and it seems fitting that the Art School should be the
last to go and, having gone, that nothing should remain. … They were a complete
cross-section, doctors and nurses, housewives and office workers,
undergraduates and dons, for it is difficult to go far in Oxford without
meeting someone who was at Church Street at some time. … They will take away
more than rubble when they knock down the old Art School.”
John Henry Brookes too,
despite his efforts over the decades to relocate the college to better
premises, was sentimental about Church Street, and gave it a heart-felt eulogy: "An insignificant building in an
insignificant street, it has made a noble contribution to Oxford life and its
passing will evoke grateful recollections of ‘the old Tech’.”
For more information, follow the links in the text or explore the anniversary timeline.
More testimonies can also be found in Bryan Brown's biography of John Henry Brookes.
