Oxfordshire’s Traditional Buildings – celebrating 21 years of the Oxfordshire Buildings Record
Over a hundred people attended our virtual 21st birthday day school in October – one from Sydney, Australia, and others in the USA. You can view the talks by clicking on the links below.
Please be aware that these recordings are copyright Oxfordshire Buildings Record and the speakers and are available to use solely by members. The recordings contain third party material which prohibits all commercial use, this is expressly prohibited and is an infringement of copyright. We therefore prefer if you do not download or copy the recordings. However, we grant members the right to use the recordings for the purposes of research and private study on the condition that any reference is fully acknowledged. By viewing and/or downloading recordings you agree to these terms and conditions.
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North Oxfordshire since Wood-Jones (Paul Clark) [Play recording]
For many years, Raymond Wood-Jones’ book on Traditional houses of the Banbury Region was considered to be the last word on the houses of north Oxfordshire, but gradually over the past two decades with individual research and special projects in Chipping Norton (with Historic England support) and Hook Norton (with VCH) a more nuanced picture is emerging.
Collars, ties and braces – the wardrobe of timber framing in the Vale of White Horse (David Clark). [Play recording]
Chris Currie noted the remarkable diversity of roof structures in the Vale of White Horse. By recording individual buildings and commissioning dendrochronology OBR has added more detail to our understanding of the development of carpentry in the area from the 1290s onwards. Local styles and innovations can be seen along with roofs apparently built by carpenters from elsewhere. This talk offers an explanation for this diversity.
The case of the vanishing farmstead (Heather Horner) [Play recording]
Farming has always required a range of building types, some utilitarian, some designed to impress, mostly vernacular in materials and style. Agricultural developments mean new ancillary buildings; do the old ones disappear? Oxfordshire buildings will be used to examine changes in the farmstead through time.
Houses and Landscapes: Peasant Perceptions in Medieval and Early Modern South Oxfordshire (Stephen Mileson). [Play recording]
The South Oxfordshire Project (to be published in book form later this year) focused on how ordinary rural inhabitants perceived their material environment over the long period 500-1650. The paper pulls out the findings from the project that relate to houses, in particular how they were used as part of the wider social space of village and hamlet from the 14th to the 17th century.
The Market Towns (Simon Townley). [Play recording]
This paper explores, using examples from Witney, Burford, Henley, and other Oxfordshire market towns, how and why town buildings differ from those in the villages and countryside. The influence of markets and associated activity (industry, shops, taverns, inns) is part of this discussion, which will conclude with some thoughts on the differences between these towns and the reasons for this.
The City Vernacular. (Julian Munby) [Play recording]
For many, Oxford’s architecture is symbolised by statement buildings such as the Radcliffe Camera, and many of the colleges have produced recent histories of their buildings. But the vernacular has not been neglected, and much has been learned from detailed studies made before and during restoration work. Some of this has been done by OBR (eg on 84 St Aldate’s) but the private sector work has inevitably played a major part. This paper shows how this added to our understanding o the city’s buildings.