Patrick Comerford
In recent days, I have been writing about a number of landmarks in east Oxford that I have noticed on my bus journeys to and from hospital appointments, and that I have returned to see time and again in recent months.
The churches and pubs include: Saint Clement’s Church, the former Saint Ignatius Chapel, the Port Mahon and Oranges and Lemons.
One of the landmarks in this part of Oxford is the Plain, an unusual roundabout known to many not only for its unusual name but also for the Victoria Fountain. It also has a puzzling, perplexing and at times dangerous layout.
The Plain marks the entrance to East Oxford, with three roads off the roundabout leading onto St Clement’s, Cowley Road and Iffley Road, Magdalen College School is to the south, as is Cowley Place, a fourth leads to Saint Hilda’s College, the most easterly college of the University of Oxford, while a fifth leads to Magdalen Bridge, Magdalen College and back into the city centre.
Saint Clement’s Church stood near the site of the roundabout until the 19th century, and there is evidence of a Danish settlement in the area ca 1000. Saint Edmund’s Well, a place where miracles were said to have taken place, was next to the church. But the church had become too small for the parish’s growing population, and was demolished in 1829 when a new and larger church was built on Marston Road.
St Clement’s was turnpiked in 1771, forcing road users to pay tolls. A new Henley Road, later Iffley Road, was formed in the 1770s to link up with Magdalen Bridge, which had been rebuilt and many houses around the church were demolished.
A tollhouse was built in front of the church in 1818, with gates on either side to control traffic. When the railway arrived in Oxford, the turnpike was abolished and the tollhouse was pulled down in 1874.
Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee was celebrated in 1897, and two years later the Victoria Fountain was built in 1899 to mark the anniversary. It was designed as a drinking fountain by the architect Edward Prioleau Warren (1856-1937), whose main works were lodgings for Oxford colleges and minor country houses.
EP Warren trained with the architect GF Bodley, whose biography he later wrote. He published illustrations in the Transactions of the Guild and School of Handicraft in 1890, joined the Art Workers Guild in 1892 and was Master in 1913.
His brother was President of Magdalen College and in 1894 he married Margaret Cecil Louisa Morrell, a member of the wealthy Morrell banking family in Oxford. Both connections may have helped him develop an extensive practice in Oxford, and his works include the Eastgate Hotel, buildings at the Radcliffe Infirmary and at Balliol College, Magdalen College, Merton College and Saint John’s College, Oxford, and new clerestory windows in Saint Cross Church. His works in Cambridge include alterations to the west range of Gonville Court at Gonville and Caius College and work at Trinity College.
The Victoria Fountain was paid for by George Herbert Morrell (1845-1906) and Emily Morrell, owners of Morrell’s Brewery in Oxford, who lived nearby at Headington Hill Hall and who were generous benefactors of Saint Clement’s Church.
GH Morrell was the Conservative MP for Woodstock (1891-1892, 1895-1906). He was a son of the Revd GK Morrell of Saint John’s College, Oxford. In 1874, he married his third cousin, Emilia Alicia Morrell (1854-1938), granddaughter of one of the founders of Morrell’s Brewery and said to be the richest heiress in Oxfordshire.
The Victoria Fountain, a Grade II listed building, is a small but elaborate hexagonal monument built of stone, with eight columns supporting a tiled roof. This is topped with a timber cupola with a four-faced clock, crowned with a weather vane.
A Latin inscription around the clock reads:
Aqua stillat, horae fugiunt.
Cave, bibe, capte eas antequam fugiunt
It translates:
The water drips, the hours go by.
Be warned, drink, catch them ’ere they fly’
The fountain features scallop decorative details and four basins that once were lined with copper. On the outside, four troughs provided water for horses and dogs.
It was inaugurated on 25 May 1899 by Princess Louise (1848-1939), Duchess of Argyll and fourth daughter of Queen Victoria. She was a was also an artist and sculptor, and her works include the statue of Queen Victoria at Lichfield Cathedral.
Since the fountain was erected, there have been many changes to the area around the Plain. A war memorial dedicated to the 142 men of the First Battalion Oxfordshire Light Infantry who died in the Second Boer War (1899-1902) stood on the site of the former churchyard from 1903 to 1950. The memorial has since been moved to Edward Brookes Barracks in Abingdon.
The former churchyard was bought by Oxford City Council in the 1930s to improve public safety and traffic flow. After delays caused by World War II, the site of Saint Clement’s churchyard behind the fountain was cleared in 1950 and the Plain was converted into a roundabout.
The Plain was further redeveloped early in 2006 to make the junction safer. That work introduced pinch points between the motor and cycle traffic, especially on the Iffley Road entry to the roundabout. Redevelopment work completed in September 2007 included resurfacing the traffic islands. Work on the roundabout and increasing the safety of cyclists was completed in 2015, but there were more calls to make changes to the junction after the death of a cyclist in 2022.
The Victoria Fountain was restored in 2009 through a partnership between Oxford City Council and Oxford Preservation Trust, with the support of the East Area Parliament, and additional funds from Magdalen College and the CPRE Oxfordshire Building Preservation Trust.
Facing the Victoria Fountain and the Plain is the Cape of Good Hope, a public house built in 1785 after road improvements created a new site, and rebuilt in 1892.
The name has nothing to do with the Boer War Memorial that once stood nearby. Instead, the pub is said to have acquired its name because the new site, between the north ends of Iffley Road and Cowley Roads, is shaped like the southern tip of South Africa. If so, the pub is incorrectly named, because the Cape of Good Hope is 90 miles away.
The pub was acquired by Morrell’s Brewery, and in 1892 a new pub, also named the Cape of Good Hope, replaced the original. The new pub was designed by a local architect, Harry George Walter Drinkwater (1844-1895), who also designed the Grapes on George Street. He was the son of George Drinkwater, a coachman who moved from Warwick and become the landlord of the George Inn on Cornmarket Street.
Drinkwater began his career as an assistant to the Gothic Revival architect GE Street in 1865-1873. He followed Street into restoring churches and designing vicarages, and received commissions from Hanley’s, Morrell’s and Weaving’s breweries.
His works include Saint Frideswide’s Vicarage, New Osney, Oxford; Saint Margaret’s Church, Walton Manor, Oxford; alterations to Saint James’s Church, Aston, Oxfordshire: New Theatre, Oxford; Saint Philip and Saint James old vicarage, Woodstock Road, Oxford, now part of Saint Antony’s College; the restoration of Saint Leonard’s Church, Eynsham, Oxfordshire. He was an uncle of the poet and playwright John Drinkwater (1882-1937).
Drinkwater’s pub at the Plain had three entrances – on Cowley Road, Iffley Road and facing the Plain, and had several name changes over the years. Morrell’s sold the pub in 1994 to Witney’s Wychwood Brewery, which renamed it the Hobgoblin after one of the brewery’s award-winning beers. Later Wychwood Brewery sold the pub and its name was changed to ‘The Pub, Oxford,’ then ‘The Pub at the Plain’, ‘The Point’, and then ‘It’s a Scream’, with a sign showing Edward Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’.
Today the pub is once again known as the Cape of Good Hope. It reverted to the name and reopened in 2016 after a major makeover by Mitchells and Butlers, who then owned 13 pubs in Oxford, including the Eagle and Child on St Giles, the Chequers on High Street, the Jericho tavern and Summertown’s only pub, the Dew Drop Inn.
