Park Town, Oxford

Park Town
The main crescent of Park Town
Park Town  Park Town shown within Oxfordshire
OS grid reference	SP512078
Civil parish	Unparished
District	Oxford
Shire county	Oxfordshire
Region	South East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Oxford
Postcode district	OX2
Dialling code	01865
Police	Thames Valley
Fire	Oxfordshire
Ambulance	South Central
EU Parliament	South East England
UK Parliament	Oxford West and Abingdon
Website	Oxford City Council
List of places: UK • England • Oxfordshire

North side of the main Park Town crescent, with a traditional Victorian Penfold-style hexagonal pillar box.

Park Town is a small residential area in central North Oxford, a suburb of Oxford, England. It was one of the earliest planned suburban developments in the area.

History and overview

Samuel Lipscomb Seckham (1827–1900) developed the houses in the main crescent in 1853–54, with Bath stone front elevations, and the west-facing crescent with an elevated pavement known as "The Terrace" in 1854–55. The Park Town Estate Company was formed in September 1857 through Seckham's efforts.

Many of the houses and gardens in Park Town were originally surrounded by ornamental iron railings. Many of these were removed for war use in the Second World War.

Park Town includes two crescents of town houses, surrounding communal gardens and a number of larger villas.

To the west is Banbury Road with Canterbury Road on the opposite side and to the east is the Dragon School. St Anne's College has student accommodation here.

Individual houses

Miss Sarah Angelina Acland (1849–1930), daughter of Sir Henry Wentworth Acland, lived for part of her life at 10 Park Town. Her interest in colour photography at the turn of the 20th century produced a number of significant early examples, which are held at the Museum of the History of Science in central Oxford.

5 Park Town was the second home of the Central Labour College (1910–1911) before it moved to 11–13 Penywern Road, Earls Court, London.

42 Park Town was the home of William Richard Morfill (1834–1909), who was the first Professor of Russian and Slavonic Languages at Oxford University. He is commemorated by a blue plaque on the building that the Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board installed in 2009.

Notable residents

Other former residents include:

• Edmund Bowen FRS (1898–1980), chemist and Fellow of University College.
• Godfrey Rolles Driver CBE, FBA (1892–1975), orientalist and Fellow of Magdalen College.
• Charles Sutherland Elton FRS (1900–1991), zoologist, ecologist and Fellow of Corpus Christi College.
• John Flemming (1941–2003), economist and Warden of Wadham College.
• James Clerk Maxwell Garnett CBE (1880–1958), educationist and Secretary of the League of Nations.
• Nevil Shute Norway (1899–1960), aeronautical engineer and novelist (pen name Nevil Shute), lived in Park Town as a boarder while attending the Dragon School.^{[citation needed]}

Sources and further reading

• Crossley, Alan; Elrington, C.R. (eds.); Chance, Eleanor; Colvin, Christina; Cooper, Janet; Day, C.J.; Hassall, T.G.; Selwyn, Nesta (1979). A History of the County of Oxford, Volume 4: The City of Oxford. Victoria County History. 
• Hinchcliffe, Tanis (1992). North Oxford. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-05184-0. 
• Kelly, Frederic Festus, ed. (1976). "Park Town". Kelly's Directory of Oxford (68th ed.). Kingston-upon-Thames: Kelly's Directory. p. 417. 
• Sherwood, Jennifer; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1974). Oxfordshire. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 320–321. ISBN 0 14 071045 0. 
• Spokes Symonds, Ann (1998). "Families". The Changing Faces of North Oxford: Book One. Witney: Robert Boyd Publications. pp. 81–83, 95–96. ISBN 1 899536 25 6. 
• Tyack, Geoffrey (1998). Oxford An Architectural Guide. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. p. 215–216. ISBN 0-19-817423-3.