Simon Wenham was our speaker on 13 May. Morris Motors, founded in Oxford by William Morris in 1912, significantly transformed the city. Morris not only established Oxford as a major car producer in Britain, but his company’s success rippled throughout the city.

The Morris Motors factory in Cowley became a central hub, employing a large portion of the city’s workforce. Associated industries like car body production also sprung up around the factory. This economic boom led to Oxford becoming a leader in British car manufacturing.

William Morris, later Lord Nuffield, wasn’t just an industrialist. His wealth funded philanthropic initiatives like the Nuffield College at Oxford University and the Nuffield Health organisation. These long-lasting contributions continue to shape the city’s educational and healthcare landscape.

Though Morris Motors merged with Austin in 1952, its legacy lives on. The Mini, still produced at the Cowley plant (now owned by BMW), is a direct descendant of the early Morris Motors vehicles. In short, Morris Motors put Oxford on the map as a car city, brought prosperity to its residents, and left a lasting mark on the city’s social fabric.

Melanie King gave a lively talk on how our favourite drinks originated outside Great Britain but all arrived on our shores between 1650 and 1657. They had a lasting impact on our diet and societal norms. These beverages were often met with controversy during their early years and much fake news surrounded them – that tea affected marital harmony, coffee affected fertility in men, and excessive chocolate consumption by pregnant mothers might turn their babies brown. Thankfully none of these myths held true.

Tea (Camellia sinensis), an evergreen shrub, is native to East Asia and likely originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and northern India. A Chinese legend says that Emperor Shen Nung accidentally discovered tea when leaves from a nearby plant blew into a pot of boiling water; it is well-documented that tea consumption in China likely goes back thousands of years. In the early 1600s, the British East India Company started bringing it back from Asia and tea was first sold in a London coffeehouse in 1657, although its consumption was limited to the elite (royalty and aristocracy). In 1706 Thomas Twining opened the first dedicated tea shop in London and, by the mid-1700s, falling prices allowed the working class to start enjoying the beverage. By the 1800s the popularity of tea secured it forever as a national drink. Tea remains an important part of British culture enjoyed throughout the day from breakfast to afternoon tea.

Coffee (Coffea or Arabica coffee) is a shrub or small tree native to Africa, Madagascar, South Asia, South-east Asia and Australia. Legend says that it was discovered by an Ethiopian goat herder who noticed how energetic his goats were after eating the berries and decided to try it himself. It was later adopted by monks to help them stay alert during the long hours of prayer. In the late 1500s coffee arrived in Britain via the Dutch East India Company and the first coffee house in England was established in Oxford in 1650. Coffee houses flourished and became centres for enlightenment, where writers, artists and thinkers gathered. By 1700 coffee houses become ingrained in British social life and even faced suspicion from the government because of the political discussions that happened within. Coffee consumption and houses later declined due to government regulations and the growing popularity of tea. Today there are a variety of coffees on offer and specialist coffee houses seem to be growing again in popularity.

Chocolate (Theobroma cacao), a small evergreen tree, is native to the tropical rainforests of the Americas. The cacao pods containing the seeds grow directly from the trunk. Its name meaning ‘food of the gods’ originated in Mesoamerica with the Maya and Aztecs, although their drink was bitter and made from ground cacao beans, cornmeal, chilli peppers and spices. Spanish conquistadors brought the cocoa beans back to Spain and Europeans transformed the bitter spicy beverage into a much sweeter one that might be recognised today. While hot chocolate houses thrived initially, chocolate bars eventually became the more popular form. Chocolate today remains a popular warm, comforting and indulgent drink enjoyed by many.

So, next time you raise a cup, remember the fascinating journeys these drinks have taken!

Our speaker, Liz Woolley, began her talk by pointing out that Rose Hill is often thought of as a modern settlement but in fact the area had been occupied throughout the centuries. During the development of the northern part of the estate in 1935, Iron Age ditches and two Roman pottery kilns were discovered. Later in medieval times, this area was mainly surrounded by fields and some forest existed to the south known as ‘The Grove’ (mentioned in the Doomsday Book) and a few oak trees from this grove still survive.

In the 18th century, Rose Hill was a small hamlet between the villages of Iffley and Cowley on the road to London. It was noted as a desirable place to live based on its elevated location overlooking the city of Oxford. In the 19th century, it gained a Methodist Chapel and by this time the ‘King of Prussia’ public house was well established. Towards the end of the 19th century, the Rose Hill Cemetery opened.

In the 20th century after the First World War, there was a clear need for houses in the local area, but the City Council had always been reluctant to get involved in providing housing. This reluctance was overcome by the 1930 Greenwood Act, which empowered local authorities to identify and clear slum areas and replace poor housing with new builds. The growing car industry in Oxford also created a large demand for cheap housing for the working population and, by 1931, there were over 5,000 applications on the City Council’s register for housing.

The City Council responded by building council houses at numerous locations including Rose Hill. The Planning Office took considerable care over the design to ensure the estate had a sensible housing density and pleasant open spaces so that the houses got enough sunlight, as well as the estate having a uniformity of design. The first estate of 145 houses was completed in 1935, while the second part of the estate was mostly finished four years later. The final part of the development of the Rose Hill estate took place after the Second World War when most of the houses were prefabricated due to a shortage of labour and skills in the post-war period.

Today the estate features a primary school, a community centre, allotments and, nearby, the Rivermead Nature Park. It has changed much since its original inception, but still enjoys many of the open spaces and green communal areas established during its development. You can find out more about Rose Hill through the Oxford Preservation Trust’s website, including a historical walk around the area.

Genealogy and family history were the subject of our February meeting when James Thorber from the Abingdon Branch of the Berkshire Family History Society came to talk to us about researching your genealogy. He began by explaining the important difference between genealogy and family history: ‘genealogy’ is the creation of your family tree based on available records, whereas ‘family history’ is concerned with placing your ancestors within the historical context of when they lived and what their lives would have been like. In his talk, James concentrated on the former.

There are a number of genealogy websites with multiple record sets you can search (e.g. Ancestry and FindMyPast), some for free and some with a paid subscription. You can build your family tree using the online tools available from such websites, or buy specialist software to use on your computer. James presented his recommended approach to creating your family tree, working backwards from your parents. He advised starting by collating basic genealogy information (birth, marriage and death certificates, and census information) before adding new ‘layers’ of information obtained from other sources such as military records and probate records. However, it’s not always that easy – you may have to work round ‘skeletons in the closet’ while so-called ‘brickwalls’ are common. To help, James offered some useful tips and suggested some potentially useful websites. He concluded his talk by answering a range of questions from the floor.

The talk on 8 January was not as advertised, the intended speaker being stranded on a narrow boat on the flooded Thames! The Club was very grateful to Marie-Louise Kerr (Curator without a Museum) for coming at short notice to talk about Famous Local Folk – Blue Plaques of South Oxfordshire.

You will find Blue Plaques commemorating people who made an impact locally, nationally or internationally on buildings around the country. Marie-Louise talked about just a few of the people with Blue Plaques in south Oxfordshire – five men and the only local lady as yet with one.

• Judge Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780) at Castle Priory House, Wallingford: judge, lawyer and politician who wrote the influential book, The Commentaries on the Laws of England, and was Recorder of Wallingford from 1749 to 1770.
• Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1978) at Winterbrook House, near Wallingford: world-famous author of detective stories, other fiction and plays (e.g. The Mousetrap) who lived with her second husband, the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, at Winterbrook from 1934 to 1976.
• Jehro Tull (1674-1741) at 19A The Street, Crowmarsh Gifford: invented a horse-drawn seed drill (described in An Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Cultivation) that helped bring about an ‘agricultural revolution’ in England, and who lived at Howberry Farm from 1700 to 1710.
• Samuel Edgar Saunders (1857-1933) at his former premises by the bridge in Goring: boat-builder and engineer from Streatley who expanded the family business first at Goring and then at South Stoke, before moving to the Isle of Wight where he set up a marine engineering company.
• Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) at Boham’s Farm, Blewbury: author of the classic children’s book, The Wind in the Willows, based on bedtime stories told to his only child Alistair (‘Letters to Mouse’); the family lived in Blewbury from 1910 until 1920, later settling in Pangbourne.
• Cecil Kimber (1885-1945) at The Boundary House pub, Abingdon: motor car designer who worked for William Morris and created the MG marque for sports cars fitted on a modified Morris chassis; he lived with his family at The Boundary House from 1933 to 1938.

There are also unofficial blue plaques such as the one on a wall in Thame Road in Warborough to Theo King (1919-1987), which bears the inscription ‘postmaster, churchwarden, scouter, friend of all in the village, lived & worked here’.

Note: Blue Plaques in London today are erected by English Heritage. Local authorities and other organisations deal with similar plaques around the country. In Oxfordshire, this is the Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board.