How to research an Oxford street
The best place to start is Oxfordshire Studies (OxS) on the top floor of the Westgate library (Note that it is closed on Wednesdays, but open on Saturdays.)
Don't attempt to work from the earliest times forwards. Tracing the history of a street is like tracing a family tree: the only way to work is backwards, from the known to the unknown. This way, you will soon see if any of the numbers have changed over the years. Even the older streets of Oxford (which appear to have the same numbering system as they did in the 1840s) have anomalies where the layout of buildings has been rejigged.
- Street directories including Kelly's The very first thing to do is to photocopy your street's entry from every available directory published since the street was numbered (namely 1846 to 1976). (Copying a directory for every five or ten years just doesn't work: you can only avoid all this photocopying if you are able to do all your work at OxS.) There are also earlier directories from 1841 in the county directory section where you will find the houses numbered but listed alphabetically under the inhabitants.
- Telephone directories For the period from 1976 to the present, you can use Oxford telephone directories, all of which are available at OxS. Don't ignore this period as being too recent and uninteresting — the end of Kelly's Directory in 1976 means that this period will be hard for future researchers to study.
- Salter's books When you have got back to 1841, two books by H.E. Salter will take you painlessly back into the seventeenth century. Survey of Oxford in 1772 gives the occupant and the measurement of the frontage of every house in the city, taken in consequence of the Mileways Act of 1771; and Oxford City Properties lists rental details of the numerous properties owned by the city up to 1855
- Censuses Start with 1851 and 1881 because (1) they span each side of a period when few photographs are available and buildings may not have been quite as they are now and (2) the Oxfordshire Family History Society have transcribed one, and the LDS the other. (The 1841 census has also been transcribed, but has no house numbers recorded and is best left until later.) The censuses of 1851, 1861, 1871, 1891, and 1901 can wait until you have time to explore them: the task is much harder because you will have to study the original records on microfiche and make your own transcription. If you are tackling a long street, don't necessarily expect to find it all listed under one parish. (Broad Street and the High, for instance, each comes under four different parishes, and even St Giles Street isn't all in St Giles' parish.)
- Maps There are Ordnance Survey maps from 1876 showing every building in Oxford in great detail at OxS: photocopy the street you are studying, and mark all the numbers you are sure about. It is also useful to copy more recent detailed maps for comparison.
- Photographs These can be extremely helpful: a business name on a building can solve a mystery immediately, so looking at pictures is definitely not a luxury to be left to the end. There is a carousel at OxS with a piece of fiche for almost every street in Oxford: you can then see all the images of your street that are available in the Oxfordshire Photographic Archive. If your street is a significant one, you will probably also find some pictures on the English Heritage site. (Make sure that you put only the name of the street in the top box, and "Oxford" in the placename box, otherwise you will get no results.)
- Building plans The Oxford City Engineer's Department Deposited Building Plans for 1875 to 1934 (available at OxS) list every street in Oxford and clarify which buildings were rebuilt, and when. The full plans are available on fiche, but you may be able to find the basic facts you need simply by looking at the index of entries, which is contained in small green books at the reception desk. Planning records from 1948 to the present can be found on Oxford City Council's public access website
- Listed buildings If you are tackling a grand street, it will probably have buildings that are listed. In this case you will find basic information about every listed building in Oxford in four loose-leaf binders at OxS: you will get the date of the building, the architect, and a brief description of both the exterior and interior. Or you can search for listed buildings by city and street on the Images of England website (necessary to register first).
- Newspapers Old newspapers are also very useful. For the earlier issues of Jackson's Oxford Journal, there is a bound index available there for the years 1753 to 1790, and and extension to 1795 is available on microfilm. Use the Oxfordshire Heritage search for "Oxfordshire Studies Business and People indexes – names of Oxfordshire businesses and people compiled from local newspapers 1800–2006". For recent news, the Oxford Mail searchable archive can be very useful, but it only goes back to 1998.
- Parish registers Transcripts of all Oxfordshire parish registers are available at OxS, enabling you to find out precisely when occupants died
- Wills and other documents The National Archives' documents on line has PCC Wills; other wills are indexed at OxS.
- Biographical information on occupants The grander houses of Oxford were often occupied by academics, and these can usually be found in Alumni Oxonienses. More detailed information on many well-known people is available in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
- Electoral registers and title deeds are available at ORO.