Grandpont

Grandpont is a mainly residential area in south Oxford. It is west of Abingdon Road, and consists mainly of narrow streets that run at right angles to the main road, with terraced late-Victorian and Edwardian houses.

It also contains the Grandpont Nature Park—a riverside park managed by

The name of the area derives from the Grandpont, a medieval stone causeway now known to survive within the core of the modern Abingdon Road for a distance of at least 700 metres south of the city centre.^[1] The causeway may have been first built in the Anglo-Saxon era, and rebuilt in the late 11th century^[2] by the first Norman lord of Oxford, Robert D'Oyly I, crossing the low-lying ground south of the City, still very liable to winter flooding from the nearby River Thames.

In 1279 there were 62 houses in Grandpont. The suburb grew slowly in the following centuries, and extensive development did not take place until the 19th century. In 1844 the Great Western Railway opened Oxford's first railway station in what is now Western Road, and that stimulated development.^[3] One of the houses built there is Grandpont House named after the neighbourhood.^[4] Built for Sir William Elias Taunton, the Town Clerk of the city of Oxford, in 1785, his family controlled the house until Brasenose College acquired the house in 1847.^[4] Brasenose maintained the house until 1959 when it was purchased by the Netherhall Educational Association.^[4]

Until 1889 Grandpont

Sources

• Eleanor Chance; Christina Colvin; Janet Cooper; C.J. Day; T.G. Hassall; Nesta Selwyn (1979). Alan Crossley; C.R. Elrington (eds.). A History of the County of Oxford, Volume 4. Victoria County History. Victoria County History.
• ISBN 0-333-39917-X
  .
• Sherwood, Jennifer;
  ISBN 0-14-071045-0
  .

• Oxfordshire County Council. Paths for All: Grandpont Nature Park