Quotations about the High
1674: Anthony Wood
The High Street, the fairest and largest wee have, partly divides North-East and South East Wards and thefore pertaineth to them. It reacheth from Quatervois [Carfax] to East Gate through the parishes of S. Martin’s, All Saints’, S. Marie’s, and S. Peter’s in the East.
c.1700: Miss Celia Fiennes
The high-Streete is a very Noble one, soe large and of a Greate Length. In this is ye University Church Called St. Maryes, which is very large and Lofty but Nothing very Curious in it.
1773: The Revd E. Tatham
High-Street is the glory of Oxford.
1782: C. P. Moritz
One of the most beautiful streets in Europe.
1791: Universal British Directory
The principal street is the High-street, running from Magdalen-bridge to Carfax church. Its length and breadth are hardly to be paralleled, and is remarkably clean and well paved. It derives its principal grandeur from the fronts of three* magnificent colleges, together with the churches of St. Mary and All Saints. This street would be less beautiful were it in a strait line. From its tendency to a curve, it affords a gradual and unexpected display of its parts, and successively surprises us, at every turn, with a new object. This street, but under different names, is continued towards the castle.
* All Souls, Queen’s, and University Colleges. Magdalen College is not included because the part of the High west of the Eastgate was still called Bridge Street at this time.
1794: William Combe
The eastern entrance into the city is by the high-street, which is without a rival in this or any other country. It is two thousand and thirty-eight feet in length, and eighty-five broad; is admirably paved, and contains Queen’s, All Souls, University, and Magdalen Colleges; with the fine churches of Saint Mary and All Saints … all together forming a most superb range of finely contrasted structures; while its curvated direction, by affording a gradual display, heightens the impression of its magnificent objects
c.1817: John Keats
The Gothic looks solemn,
The plain Doric column
Supports an old Bishop and Crozier;
The mouldering arch,
Shaded o'er by a larch
Stands next door to Wilson the Hosier.
1820: William Wordsworth
The stream-like windings of that glorious street
1838: Gustave Friedrich Waagen
The High Street of Oxford has not its equal in the whole world.
1852: Gardner’s Oxfordshire Directory
High-street, the principal street of the city, is spacious, well paved, upwards of half a mile in length, and so superbly edificed, as to be generally esteemed one of the most beautiful streets in Europe…. At almost every step, the stranger is regaled with a fresh display of architectural grandeur…. One view of this street, near its middle, where there is a graceful curve is particularly captivating and impressive, and may challenge comparison for mingled beauty, variety, and effect, with almost any street scene in the world.
1868: G.V. Cox
The propensity of our Undergraduates to abbreviate all academic names and phrases (as well as their hours of study) [in the early 1830s meant that] the High Street, with all its beauty, was put upon short allowance, and became 'The High'.
1874–5: Shotover Papers
The High.—A Street in Oxford, so called because the rent of rooms and the price of commodities there is excessive.
1881: Oscar Wilde (The Burden of Itys)
Magdalen’s tall tower tipped with tremulous gold
Marks the Long High Street of the little town.
1895: Hastings Rashdall
There is probably not a single yard of ground in any part of the classic High Street that lies between St Martin’s and St Mary’s which has not, at one time or another, been stained with blood. There are historic battlefields on which less has been spilt
1898: Thomas Hardy
And there’s a street in the place – the main street – that ha'n't another like it in the world….' (a carter describing the High to Jude)
1944: Lawrence Dale
The High Street, avoiding some long-forgotten obstruction, threaded the centre in a curve that unrolled a continuous succession of delight. The vertical shaft of Magdalen stood sentinel at the east poised miraculously on the horizontal bridge, and St Mary’s spire arose from the concavity of the street as though by a stroke of genius.
1948: Thomas Sharp
The perfect subject for railway-carriage photography.
1974: Nicolaus Pevsner
The High Street is one of the world’s great streets. It has everything.