Malcolm Graham on his Oxford Heritage Walks books

From a young age, I developed a passion for exploring places, and I got a real buzz from investigating how, why and when they had developed.

This all began in my home town, Brighton, and it was refined during my student years in the 1960s in Nottingham, Leeds and Leicester.

My growing interest in the historical environment occurred as the pace of change was accelerating, and I was soon armed with a camera, recording scenes and buildings that seemed likely to disappear.

I arrived in Oxford as local studies librarian in 1970 to be astonished by the beauty of much of the city centre, horrified by the ongoing destruction of St Ebbes and intrigued by the city’s many suburbs and former villages.

This was fertile ground for exploration, and I quickly hit on the idea of compiling a series of town trails to share both my findings and my enthusiasm. The first On Foot in Oxford leaflet, covering the area between Gloucester Green and Walton Well, was published in 1973, and Oxford City and County Libraries published 11 more by the late 1980s.

A local artist, Laura Potter, supplied drawings for the early trails, and Edith Gollnast, then employed in the city council’s conservation section, illustrated the later ones.

Debbie Dance, director of Oxford Preservation Trust, was a great fan of the On Foot in Oxford series, and, as Edith and I neared retirement, she encouraged us to think about producing up-to-date versions, incorporating both changes to the physical environment and the results of recent research.

We took very little persuading, and Debbie also enlisted the help of Alun Jones, long known for his beautifully drawn maps of Oxford and Oxfordshire, to supply the maps which guide walkers, and readers, along the route, and mark the location of each drawing.

Oxford Preservation Trust published the first Oxford Heritage Walk in 2013. Given the trust’s crucial role in securing public access to Oxford Castle, a fascinating and previously hidden corner of the city, it seemed entirely appropriate for us to begin and end the walk there.

The route takes in New Road – new in 1769-70! – as well as the glorious tree-lined St Giles, and the delightful 1820s backwater, Beaumont Buildings.

You walk among crowds past the Saxon tower of St Michael at the North Gate in Cornmarket, but hear only your own footsteps in the atmospheric stone passageway, Bulwarks Lane.

Walk two, published in 2014, is a circular from Broad Street, brief in length, but absolutely filled with historical interest. It includes Cornmarket, part of the High Street and the Covered Market as well as Radcliffe Square and the Bodleian Library. In Brasenose Lane, you can see the only remaining Oxford highway which drains into a central gutter or kennel!

In newly-published book three, we take you on a circular walk from Catte Street to still rural corners of Holywell.

You pass many of Oxford’s most iconic buildings, including Hertford College’s Bridge of Sighs, the University Museum of Natural History, St Catherine’s College and Magdalen Tower.

In Holywell Street, you have arguably the finest surviving group of old houses in the city, and the delightful Holywell Music Room, completed in 1748.

You also get to experience some very special Oxford spaces, the echoing ravine of soot-blackened New College Lane, the delightful tranquillity of Holywell Cemetery, and Parson’s Pleasure, the former men’s bathing place beside the Cherwell where notices formerly advised ladies to disembark from punts and walk around to avoid embarrassment.

You walk through Oxford’s medievaI defences on the way to the Turf Tavern, and see traces of English Civil War earthworks built in the 1640s when the city was the Royalist capital.

Locked gates in Savile Road and South Parks Road are reminders of Love Lane, an ancient footpath through rural Holywell which was later upgraded and maintained by the university as a health-giving walk for Town and Gown. The name of the lane hints at its popularity with courting couples, and the university insisted on more decorous behaviour in the University Parks laid out in 1864-1865!

You get a glimpse of the early days of Oxford’s motor industry from the retained 1910 frontage of the old Morris Garage in Longwall Street, and the etched glass panel at number 48 High Street where William Morris was in business between 1898 and 1910.

Throughout the walk, you are made aware of the many college and university buildings that have been slotted into this precious corner of Oxford; also of a few that have been successfully resisted. The science area in South Parks Road continues to evolve year by year, and Edith’s drawings include a before and after view of the new Harris Manchester College clock tower development in Mansfield Road.

Few cities can offer so much variety in such a compact area, and I still find the process by which this has happened intrinsically fascinating. As Dr Johnson almost said, “Anyone who is tired of Oxford is tired of life!”

You can buy Oxford Heritage Walks Book 3 – From Catte Street to Parson’s Pleasure at oxfordpreservation.org.uk or from Blackwell’s and the Visitor Information Centre on Broad Street.