 Early
19th century North Oxford, usually known as St. Giles' Field, was very much
a working suburb, providing food for
local markets , gravel for road and railway building and space for an iron
foundry, later Lucy's Eagle Ironworks, and brickfields. This led to a mix
of social classes within the suburb. Cheaper
houses for working people were built, north of the Radcliffe Observatory,
on the west side which was first blighted by the Oxford Canal and later,
by the railway. The early 19th century small
terrace houses, those in Adelaide Street for example, are very similar
to properties built at the same time in Jericho. However there was also
an advance guard of middle class residents who occupied scattered
villas towards the east of the suburb before 1850. |
