Post-medieval Oxford - Oxford City Council

Gardens and pleasure grounds
Post-medieval gardens
The development of Oxford Gardens is summarised by Batey (1982). See also
Steane (2004) and Tiller (n.d.).
Urban gardens and market gardens
There is some evidence that economic decline led to depopulation in Oxford in the
16 th century and several sites indicate abandonment in favour of market gardens. A
number of market gardens are shown on 17 th century maps of the city. Loggan's Map
of Oxford in 1675 shows a market garden was established outside the City Wall, east
of Merton Street, and Rose Lane Nursery still existed in the late 19th century.
Another market garden is shown north of Wadham College, on Parks Road. In the
south-west corner are gardeners' cottages, which still survive (UAD 522); the garden
was absorbed by Wadham College before 1751. Loggan also shows an area north of
Worcester College as a market garden with a row of cottages fronting the street.
More work is required to bring together the available excavated data, which is
fragmentary. Investigations at the Wesley Memorial Church on New Inn Hall Street
recorded a layer of dark brown garden soil dating to the 17 th century overlying robbed
out sections of the medieval City Wall (Mumford 2010: 8). Extensive bedding
trenches related to market gardening within the grounds of the Radcliffe Infirmary
were recorded during the large open area excavation in 2009 (Braybrooke 2010).
Paradise Gardens, the former precinct of the Greyfriars remained in use as a
pleasure grounds and nursery throughout the post-medieval period, which was also
the case for Tredwell's Gardens on the site of the Blackfriars west of St
Aldate’s/Grandpont (Brown-Grant 1985-86). Archaeological investigations at
Paradise Square in 1994 did not record a significant amount of evidence from the
post-medieval gardens, probably due to modern truncation, however, some deep
cultivation layers containing 17 th -18 th century pottery have been recorded (Hardy
1997: 161). Evidence for post-medieval pleasure garden features were recorded
within the Castle motte ditch (Norton 2006a: 26).
Registered parks and gardens
There are 16 registered parks and gardens within Oxford district authority, which
include the following post-medieval gardens:
Christ Church (RPG 1409)
Christ Church includes approximately one hectare of designed gardens with a further
1.5 hectares of meadow; the gardens are Grade I (RPG). The medieval churchyard
of St Frideswide’s was used as the canon’s garden (now the Cathedral Garden) from
1546 onwards. The 16 th century Garden of the Canons of the Sixth Stall was created
for the Regius Professor of Hebrew. Archaeological investigations in the garden in
1954 (UAD 164) recorded evidence of several 16 th century and later garden walls.
Investigations in 1962 recorded evidence of four centuries of garden soil (Sturdy
1988: 87).
Corpus Christi (RPG 2096)
The Grade II (RPG) gardens of Corpus Christi, at 0.1 hectares, are relatively small
compared with others in Oxford, and are situated to the south of the original 16 th
century gardens, including a terrace bank and clair-voyee built against the City Wall.
OXFORD ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESOURCE ASSESSMENT- POST MEDIEVAL
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