THE latest batch of award-winning buildings dating back 40 years includes the restoration of some of the city’s finest hidden gems.

Each year Oxford Preservation Trust (OPT) has handed out awards in a variety of categories recognising new buildings, conservation projects and environmental schemes.

The awards were launched in 1977 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the trust, which has undertaken its own restoration projects including the Oxford Castle Quarter.

This week we chart the best winners from 1993 through to the turn of the century.

The restoration of the former Tackley Inn in High Street to its current guise of A-Plan Insurance won a plaque in 1993 as architects Lee and Ross were praised for solving conflicts between modern technology and the historic features of the building – while the restoration of the taxi shelter in St Giles was also successful.

The following year the desecrated Corpus Christi Farmhouse in Littlemore and the tireless work of Margaret O’Rorke to restore it won a plaque.

In 1995 the joint venture between the Greene King brewery and Oxford City Council to transform the Old School in Gloucester Green into a pub and tourist information centre won a certificate in a fairly barren year for the awards.

Entries improved in 1996 as the alterations to Wolfson College’s buildings impressed the OPT judges.

Bath-based architects Bozeat Partnership fully reconstructed the First Church of Christ Scientist in St Giles to form a new entrance and reading room with garden courtyard and it was enough to win a plaque in 1998.

The stone cleaning of the Wesley Memorial Church lifted the gloom over New Inn Hall Street earning the final certificate of the 20th century.

Finally a ‘project of outstanding quality’ saw the painstaking refurbishment of the painted ceilings in the Duke Humfrey’s Library at the Bodleian.

Once all the winners are featured, readers will be able to vote for their favourites, with a prize of two tickets to the OPT awards in November up for grabs.