Gunfield, 19 Norham Gardens
Frederick Codd (1799-1881>
1877 (with later additions, including former chapel and linking passageway, in early 20c.)
North Oxford
Photograph and text 2008 by Jacqueline Banerjee.
[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Norham Gardens was built on the old Norham Manor estate, and is the main residential area of the important Victorian suburb of North Oxford — "the most fashionable habitat in Oxford for the first fifty years of its existence" (Saint). So special was North Oxford that one of the houses along here was featured in Viollet-le-Duc's Habitations Modernes Vol. II, 1877. This grade II listed detached house is one of a number of such Gothic houses in Norham Gardens. Gunfield's red brick walls are relieved by stone dressings and bands of blue brick, and it has tall gables, a tiled roof, and high chimney stacks. The tower above the central bay is pyramidal, and has a cast-iron finial. Although the house only has two main storeys it has a semi-basement and an attic as well, and so looks imposingly tall. Notice the way the pointed ground floor windows are stepped on the right.
Codd had been a pupil of the prominent Oxford architect William Wilkinson, the designer of (for example) the Randolph Hotel. Codd himself was active in other areas of Oxford as well. Here, he would probably have been designing for one of the various speculative builders who developed this area. At first Gunfield was a family home: for example, in 1893 a crèche was opened in the poorer west part of Oxford with funding (probably, in the form of a legacy) from a philanthropist, a Miss Mary Jephson of Gunfield ("Not a bad house" 8); it was later the long-time home of the Denekes, a celebrated Oxford family. But in time, like so many other big Victorian houses in the area, it passed into college ownership. It is now an annexe of St Edmund's Hall, Oxford, which also owns other property in this road.
Related Material
Bibliography
English Heritage: Images of England, no. 24598. Viewed 2 October 2008.
"Not a bad house; not a bad locality: A Study of the Historic Built Environment of the West End of Oxford." Oxford Buildings Record. Viewed 2 October 2008.
Saint, Andrew. "Three Oxford Architects". Viewed 2 October 2008.
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Last modified 5 October 2008