Nearly forty years ago, Patrick Brown of Bristol University, a lecturer in the Department of Architecture, surveyed Buildings of Britain 1550-1750 South West England, Ashbourne: Moorland Publishing, 1981. It was one of only two books issued in the series: the other was Yorkshire by the series editor, the late David Hey, which appeared in 1979. The series sought to portray buildings of the first two post-medieval centuries in England in seven fairly arbitrary regions. South-West England was deemed to be all that was south and west of Oxford, but eschewing both traditional and more recent county boundaries, so half of Hampshire but not the whole county and similarly the western part of Berkshire together with a fragment of southern Gloucestershire were included, roughly England south of the A40 and west of the A34. Almost a century ago, the two roads crossed at Carfax in Oxford; this was before Oxford's northern bypass was built in the 1930s and motor cars were excluded from the city centre in the late 1980s. In the early 1950s, you could still drive west along The High and Queen Street and then by way of New Road, passing Oxford Castle with the county gaol on your left, and Park End Street go under the Great Western Railway just south of Oxford Station whereas the route east from there was via Hythe Bridge Street, George Street, Broad Street, and Longwall to turn left on to The High to cross Magdalen Bridge.
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