March 2022 meeting: Club news and Poor Law in crisis

At our meeting on 14 March, members recorded their thanks to Charlie Milward for his stalwart service as Treasurer since 2015, and to Colin Orr Burns for agreeing to take over the task.

Colin reminded members of the importance of oral history. Collecting it requires care and skill: from personal experience of mis-remembering when he had heard a particular song, Colin could attest that memories can be unreliable. The Club’s Oral History Group’s current interviews are focusing on Radley residents’ memories of life during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Deborah Hayter then spoke about Poor Law in the 18th century. Poor Law had been codified by the Act for the Relief of the Poor, 1601. This empowered voluntary church officials in each parish to collect rates for the relief of the parish’s sick, elderly, orphaned, ‘unable’, or ‘impotent’ poor. A few parishes set up workhouses, providing ‘indoor relief’. More commonly, the poor received ‘outdoor relief’ of food and clothing. The officials ‘moved on’ vagabonds.

In the 18th century the cost of poor relief hugely increased, in some places beyond ratepayers’ ability to pay. There was growing disquiet about the ‘undeserving’ poor. In 1771 Arthur Young, agricultural reformer, wrote that ‘Everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor or they will never be industrious.’

In 1795 the magistrates in Speenhamland (near Newbury) devised a scale for linking benefits to the price of bread. This was widely copied, but growing disquiet about its cost led to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which instituted nation-wide, and deliberately prison-like, workhouses.

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February 2022 meeting: Oxford Preservation Trust

On 14 February, Stephen Dawson, Assistant Operations Director of the Trust, described its history, sites, and activities. The Trust began in 1927. It aims to enhance Oxford’s buildings and its green setting, conserving the best of the old, and encouraging the best of the new.

The Trust’s first purchase was the Old Berkeley Golf Course on Boars Hill, then threatened with development. Now you can relish the justly famous view of Oxford’s ‘dreaming spires’. In Marston, the Trust is working to improve the meadows beside the Cherwell. It owns the Victoria Arms pub, leased to a brewery, and hopes to restore the historic ferry.

In Kennington, the Trust owns meadows by the river, and the Memorial Field, notable for its huge ant hills (and reachable from Radley via Radley Large Wood). You can book a visit to the Trust’s mediaeval Merchant’s House in East St Helen Street, Abingdon, remarkable for its beautifully restored gallery window.

The Trust was bequeathed the delectable Wolvercote Lakes, and owns Wolvercote Community Orchard, for which it charges an annual rent of a basket of apples.

The Trust was a key player in the regeneration of the Oxford Castle Quarter, now a rich resource for education, theatre, and, recently, spectacular son et lumière. (Search on YouTube for: Oxford Castle 950 years.) It has restored a former butcher’s shop in the Oxford Covered Market, and looks after the famous painted room at 3 Cornmarket. It is currently restoring the railway swing bridge which led to the former LMS station in Oxford.

The Trust comments on all significant planning applications, and is currently urging planning authorities to adopt strategies for the sensitive siting of solar energy plants. It makes annual awards to recognize outstanding new buildings, conservation, and sustainability. It has published a series of guides to Heritage Walks around central Oxford, with text by local historian Malcolm Graham and illustrations by Edith Gollnast, former conservation officer at Oxford City Council.

Every year the Trust organizes Open Doors, letting local visitors see inside properties that are normally closed: book 10 and 11 September 2022 in your diary.

Answering questions after his talk, Stephen Dawson noted that the Trust hopes to engage with the prospective purchaser of Radley Large Wood.

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January 2022 meeting: Romans in Oxfordshire

On 10 January, encouraging numbers of members and guests braved a dreich evening to hear Marie-Louise Kerr describe traces of the Romans in Oxfordshire.

Soon after their invasion in AD 43, the Romans established a fort at Alchester (near Bicester). Two wooden gateposts survived, which, from the pattern of the tree rings in their wood, could be dated to AD 44 or 45.

At the Museum of Oxfordshire in Woodstock you can see this tombstone of a legionary who died around AD50. ‘Lucius Valerius Geminus … of the Pollia voting tribe, from Forum Germanorum, veteran of the Second Augustan Legion, aged 50(?), lies here. His heir(s?) had this set up in accordance with his will.’

The most striking Roman site in Oxfordshire is the villa at North Leigh, probably started around AD100, and later hugely extended. You can see remains of hypocausts, and some beautiful mosaic flooring.

Other important Roman, or Romano-British, sites include Cholsey, Goring (where there was a villa with a cold plunge pool), Long Wittenham, and near Broughton Castle.

In answer to a question after her talk, Marie-Louise confirmed that Dorchester had been an important Roman settlement, but suggested that few traces of it have survived.

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Club visit to Radley College chapel

On 16 December 2021, members of the Radley History Club enjoyed an enjoyable and interesting visit to see the Chapel’s new extension with Estates Bursar, David Anderson.

The chapel was designed in 1893 by the famous Victorian architect Thomas Graham Jackson and is Grade II* Listed. In 2015, Purcell Architects won a design competition for an extension to the Chapel. Fortunately work on the extension was able to continue through the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, as it was a slow-moving traditional project with only a handful of workers on-site at any one time. Minor finishing touches were still being put in place on the day of the Club visit just after the end of term. Indeed the original chandelier from the chapel had yet to be rehung in the centre of the sanctuary roof.

Radley College Chapel with its new sanctuary, December 2021

The main aim of the extension was to create additional seating in the chapel to accommodate the significant increase in the number of pupils following the opening of a new boarding house. A secondary aim was the enhance the capabilities of the space, for example, to better accommodate larger groups of musicians.

The key element was the construction of a completely new sanctuary at the end of the chapel. This involved knocking out a large hole in the existing wall behind the altar without removing the glass from the large stained glass window above! The octagonal timber-framed roof of the new sanctuary (see below) was designed and constructed by Carpenter Oak Ltd.

The timber ceiling of the new sanctuary

Other changes included:

  • alterations to extend and strengthen the balcony to allow the installation of a magnificent new organ
  • the addition of two alcoves on each side of the top of the chancel, each providing 20 seats
  • installation of new pews in front of these alcoves indistinguishable from the existing pews
  • sourcing matching floor tiles for the space between the new pews and below the new stone arches leading to the sanctuary
  • lighting the chapel ceiling for the first time and installing LED lamps on all the pews
  • refurbishment of the 15th century reredos behind the altar
  • repositioning of memorials such as those to Old Radleians who died in the Boer War and the First World War on the walls next to the sanctuary
View from the top of the chancel looking towards the balcony and the new organ
View towards the new sanctuary at Radley College chapel, December 2021
View looking down the chancel towards the new sanctuary

After the visit Club members enjoyed mince pies and a hot drink courtesy of Radley College.

Radley College’s new guide to the chapel has more about the history of the chapel and the recent building work.

November 2021 meeting: The Harcourt Arboretum 1712-2014

One of Oxfordshire’s brightest botanical jewels

On 8 November Timothy Walker described the Arboretum’s history from (about) 1712 until 2014, the end of his stint as Director of the Oxford Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum.

In 1710 Sir Simon Harcourt had acquired the Nuneham estate, probably as an investment. His grandson Simon, the first Earl Harcourt, decided to live there, and organized the removal of the then village to its present site along the main road. In 1777 he drowned while rescuing his favourite dog from a well. George, the second Earl, enthusiastically continued laying out the gardens near Nuneham House, with notable herbaceous borders and a new ornamental church (whose dome is prominently visible from several places in Radley).

The earldom died out, and the estate passed to Edward Vernon-Harcourt, archbishop of York, and, in 1861, to one of his sons, William Vernon Harcourt, a clergyman with a keen interest in chemistry. William, working with Charles Daubeny, professor of Botany at Oxford (and saviour of the Botanic Garden) began laying out the Arboretum, planting many oaks and limes, expensively imported redwoods, and rhododendrons along a serpentine path.

In 1904 the estate briefly passed to Sir William Harcourt, who as Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1894 had reformed and increased estate duties. They may have been a factor in his grandson Viscount Harcourt’s decision in 1948 to sell the estate to the University of Oxford.

Initially the University saw the land as a source of income from forestry. In the 1960s the University proposed to sell it. Cyril Darlington, Professor of Botany, had to campaign for the Arboretum to become an adjunct to the Botanic Garden. From then on the Arboretum has been continually improved and enriched, and now includes two colourful wildflower meadows and a richly stocked pond.

Timothy Walker illustrated his talk with pictures of favourite trees, and revealed some of his pet hates, including the resident feral peafowl, squirrels, and people who trample the bluebells in order to pick the white ones. He described a trip to Heathrow to collect some palm trees from David Mulholland.

In an answer to questions after his talk, Timothy Walker confirmed that the effects of climate heating are visible at the Arboretum in earlier springs and later autumns, and more frequent extreme events such as the great gale of January 1990.

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