Henry Stephen and Headington
Henry Stephen OBE, MBE was born in Manchester on 10 July 1889. He was a famous chemist who invented the Stephen reaction, a way to make aldehydes (R-CHO) from nitriles (R-CN).
Stephen worked with Chaim Weizmann at the University of Manchester, and was later Professor of Chemistry at Witwatersrand University in South Africa.
In 1957, after returning to England, Stephen started a chemistry review, Tetrahedron, which he continued to edit with his wife Theodora (known as Dora) Stephen, who was also an eminent chemist.
Henry Stephen lived in Cumnor Rise, and it is only after his death on 6 July 1965 that the Headington connection came about. His widow Dora sold their Cumnor house and bought the land off Kiln Lane in Risinghurst (including the lake) that had been attached to C.S. Lewis’s house, The Kilns. She had a new house built for herself on part of this land (8 Lewis Close).
In 1969 Dora Stephen gave a generous donation so that BBONT (the Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Naturalists’ Trust) could buy the 12 acres of land, including the lake, specifying that it should be named the Henry Stephen/C.S. Lewis Nature Reserve, as she wished it to commemorate her husband as well as C.S. Lewis.
BBONT has been renamed BBOWT (the Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Wildlife Trust).
In 2003 the reserve was renamed the C.S. Lewis Reserve (In Memory of Henry Stephen). Dora Stephen died in 2006, and the Stephen family are hoping that her name can also be included in the name of the reserve.
- Oxford Times, 12 June 2007: "Dispute over reserve's name"