Boar's Hill, near Oxford (formerly Berkshire)
The above postcard was posted on 25 June 1907 from "M.K.M." to Miss Tudor of St Hugh's Hall, Oxford, proposing a visit "up the Hill" the following day.
The view is along Jarn Way looking east towards the junction with Berkeley Road, and on the right is Ripon Hall, which was then a theological college. (Ripon Hall amalgamated in 1975 with Cuddesdon College, and the name survives in "Ripon College Cuddesdon".)
The baby in the perambulator could well be the grandson of George, 7th Earl of Berkeley. An elderly resident's father recalled that Lennox Berkeley, who was born at Boar's Hill in 1903, was regularly taken out by his nanny.
Above right: The former Ripon Hall on Boar's Hill in September 2007. It is now known as Foxcombe Hall, and is occupied by the offices of the Open University in the South.
The postcard below shows "Sandlands", Foxcombe Road, Boar's Hill, near Oxford (then in Berkshire).
The above postcard was postmarked at Abingdon on 5 January 1905, and was sent by M. Perrott to Miss Berry at Hyde Park, London. It was produced for advertising purposes by the architect of Sandlands, namely Stephen Salter, whose offices were above the Lloyds Bank on the north-west corner of Oxford's High Street. He had himself designed this ornate bank at 2 and 3 High Street in 1901, as well as the timber-framed building at 94 High Street (now occupied by Quod restaurant) in 1902.
The postcard below, which shows a different view of Sandlands, was sent by the architect himself to H. B. Cooper, Esq., M.A. at Linton Road. Henry B. Cooper was a Fellow of Keble College and lived at Costessey House, 14 Linton Road. The card was postmarked at Oxford on 19 December 1906, and has an interesting message on the other side written in the architect's own hand, also reproduced below.
The above message reads:
I have now the last site on main road at Foxcombe Hill to let. Earl Berkeley [owner of Sandlands] has taken up all other main road sites to stop building. It is an ideal site for health which after all is the chief thing. Deep redsand subsoil. About 500 ft above sea level. Sheltered from east, on 999 years lease, £8 per acre. It is close to Sandlands, this green roofed house, and only £1000. Pleased to show anyone over it. They would save time and money by so doing if they thought of building. SS
The Earl of Berkeley was the first owner of Sandlands, and he was still living there in 1915. By 1930 it was occupied by Arthur Leslie Johnson; in 1935 by Mrs Grierson, and in 1942 by Dugall Sutherland MacColl (1859–1948).
Gladys Hall wrote on the back of the above postcard, "This is a photo of where I work."
Boars Hill
Kelly's Directory for Berkshire for 1891 lists the following people under Wootton who lived on Boars Hill, mostly in the court directory:
Hedderley Mrs, Boars hill
Hughes Jesse, Boars hill
Mathews Angelo Alfred, West view, Boars hill
Shrimpton Arthur T., Boars hill
Wootten Wootten Gilbert R., Swiss cottage, Boar's hillCommercial
Cotmore Charles, market gardener, Boars hill
William Warde Fowler wrote an essay on Boars Hill in The Oxford Country (1905), and Sandlands must have been one of the new houses he observed. Here are a few of extracts:
And as I approach the colony, where I have not been for months, new houses of all shapes and sizes tempt me to count them, but I soon get lost; ... and the linnets that used to dance about on the gorse are not here to-day, while human beings and bicycles are everywhere. The thought comes into my mind that the colonization of the hill is really due to the bicycle, for without it the colonists could not speed down to their daily duties, learned or unlearned, in the misty valley below....
Nor is the peculiar Berkshire character of the hill as yet wholly vanishing. Boar's Hill with its appurtenances is geologically an island; but it is an island in another sense too. It is an insulated bit of one type of Berkshire country – the country of Scotch firs, bracken, and gorse, with cottages of old red brick and tiled roofs covered with yellow lichen, and you must cross the plain and a good part of the Ilsley Downs before you come again upon such a combination of colour. The old cottages on the hill are not so obvious as they were, but all the rest is there, and neither on Shotover nor at Stow Wood, not anywhere on the Oxfordshire side can I feel as I do on these heights that I am in Southern England. At Beckley or Forest Hill I am in the Midlands; here I am in the sunny South.
... What will it all be like fifty years hence, and where will the Scholar Gipsy of that day find his rest? Will such a creature be suffered to exist?
Kelly's Directory for 1935 states: "Boars Hill is a residential district, partly in the parish of Sunningwell and partly in the parish of Wootton. It is recommended as a health resort."
John Betjeman in "Myfanwy at Oxford" writes of "Bicycle bells in a Boar's Hill Pine".