Patrick Comerford
IWe have been in Oxford for much of the day. But a few days ago I found myself stuck at the bus station in Gloucester Green in Oxford for over an hour, waiting for a bus to Buckingham: one bus was cancelled, and the next one was over 20 minutes late. In summary, it meant I missed the last bus from Buckingham to Stony Stratford and had to travel on to Milton Keynes.
Had I realised I was going to eventually lose an hour and a half in such a way last week, I could have planned to stay on and found a college chapel in Oxford to go to Choral Evensong. Bus stations are never sightly places to wait around in, although there are many good coffee shops close to Gloucester Green.
At the north side of Gloucester Green, the Old School until recently housed Sichuan Grand, a Chinese restaurant that closed two months ago. But from 1902 to 1934 this was the Central Boys’ School and it remains an interesting building.
The school was built in 1901 when some picturesque old cottages were demolished in order to make room for the new building designed by the architect Leonard Aloysius Scott Stokes (1858-1925) of Westminster and built by John Wooldridge of Oxford at a cost of about £5,700.
Leonard Stokes trained as an architect in London and travelled in Germany and Italy. Most of his designs were for Roman Catholic buildings, including churches, convents and schools. His first work was Sacred Heart Church, Exeter. He also designed Saint Joseph’s Church, Maidenhead (1884), Saint Clare’s Church, Liverpool (1890) and Saint Peter and All Souls Church, Peterborough (1896). He also designed country houses and telephone exchanges. He was President of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1910-1912.
The carvings over the main front entrance show Saint Anne on the left reading to four girls, which seems odd, as this was a boys-only school, and King Alfred on the right facing four boys.
The origins of the school go back to 1871, when the Congregationalists opened the first and earlier Central Boys’ School in a building to the east of Gloucester Green behind their church in George Street. It was a nondenominational school with no compulsory religious education, and by 1889 the attendance was 192.
Both this boys’ school and the girls’ school in the former Wesleyan Chapel in New Inn Hall Street were taken over by the Oxford School Board in 1898. Both buildings were condemned immediately, the board agreed to replace them on two new sites in central Oxford, and the Gloucester Green site was bought from Alderman Robert Buckell for a boys’ school in 1899.
The school designed by Leonard Stokes was built on the north side of Gloucester Green between 1899 and 1900. At the same time, a new girls' central school, also designed by Leonard Stokes, was built on New Inn Hall Street.
The school had a central circular lower hall, on to which converged various classrooms, lavatories, cloak rooms, master’s private room, board room and playgrounds. A separate building at the back of the school had an upper floor with a large classroom for manual training in technical education. It was reached by a spiral staircase. The roof had an ornamental bell turret, and the classroom ceilings were uniformly 15 ft in height.
Both the Central Boys’ and the Central Girls’ Schools were formally opened in 1901 by Sir William Anson (1843-1914). He was Vinerian reader in English Law at Oxford, a Fellow of All Souls’ College, and from 1881 Warden of All Souls.
Anson was also Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University in 1898-1899, Chancellor of the Diocese of Oxford in 1899, and MP for Oxford University from 1899. He took an active part in the foundation of a school of law at Oxford, and taught law to undergraduates of Trinity College, Oxford, from 1886 to 1898. He died in 1914.
In all, 54 boys from the school died in World War I, and the school’s war memorial was moved to Oxford Spires Academy. The school closed in 1934, when the former Central Boys’ School merged with the Municipal Secondary School – the former City of Oxford Technical Day School – to form Southfield Grammar School. With further mergers, it became Oxford Boys’ School in 1966, later Oxford Community School and then, in 2011, Oxford Spires Academy.
Meanwhile, after its closure in 1934, the school building on Gloucester Green was used for many years as bus offices and a waiting room. It was given Grade II listed status in 1972.
From 1994 to 2003, the building housed Oxford City’s Information Centre on the west side and the Old School pub on the east side. The pub survived until about 2006, and in 2007 the whole building became a the Spice Valley Bangladeshi and Indian Restaurant, and it has remained a restaurant until about two months ago (April 2026).
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