William Charles Walker
Mayor of Oxford 1952/3
William Charles Walker (1882–1966) was born at Wolverhampton on 30 July 1882. His parents were also born at Wolverhampton: his father Charles Walker in 1853, and his mother Mary in 1852.
At the time of the 1901 census he was an 18-year-old builder’s clerk living with his parents at 316 Hordern Road, Wolverhampton. Two of his younger brothers were also in the house: Bernard (13), who was a telegraph messenger, and Rowland (9).
Walker left school at 14 and went to work in the office of a local building firm, attending evening classes in building construction.
In 1903, when he was 21, Walker was sent to a job at Salisbury Plain. The living quarters there, however, could not accommodate wives, and he came to Oxford to work for the building and civil engineers Benfield & Loxley. He got married in August 1904, and he and his wife settled in a rented house at 80 Fairacres Road. Their only child, Violet (later Mrs Avery), was born in February 1912.
By 1914 Walker was living at 161 Divinity Road.
Walker was to stay with Benfield & Loxley for the rest of his life, becoming first a partner, then one of the first three directors, and then joint governing director.
Just after the First World War Walker became a friend of William Morris, who commissioned him to buy "a lot of land at Cowley" for his new car factory. Walker cycled out to Cowley with his co-director on a Sunday morning and got an option on the land. Benfield & Loxley also built the car works, and Morris said to Walker, "No other firm shall lay a single brick at Cowley as long as I have anything to do with it."
Benfield & Loxley also built all the main new university buildings around this time: the Radcliffe Science Library, the New Bodleian Library, and Nuffield College.
Walker was awarded the OBE for his work during the Second World War.
He was first elected to the City Council in 1946 as a Conservative member for the North Ward. He was elected Sheriff of Oxford in 1950, and both Mayor and Alderman in 1952. He resigned from the Council in 1958.
Walker died in August 1966, at the age of 84, at his home at 46 Hill Top Road.
See also:
- W.C. Walker, Some Reminiscences of an Oxford Builder (privately printed autobiography, 1960)
- Oxford Times, 12 August 1966, p. 28e–f
- 1901 Census: Wolverhampton (St Andrew), 2677/91