The Survey of London’s volume on Oxford Street

The fifty-third volume in the Survey of London’s main or parish series was published in April 2020. In the Survey’s 126-year history, Oxford Street is the first volume to focus on a single street. It may also be claimed as the first comprehensive modern monograph on the history of a British urban thoroughfare. At an early stage in planning the Survey’s investigations in Marylebone, it was decided that it was not only pragmatic but appropriate to work towards a separate study of Oxford Street. As one of the longest continuous shopping streets in Europe, stretching for more than a mile in length, Oxford Street has a distinctive topography and character.

The study follows on from the publication of South-East Marylebone in 2017, covering a large portion of the West End north of Oxford Street, or more specifically the area bounded by Marylebone Road at the north, Cleveland Street and Tottenham Court Road at the east, and Marylebone High Street at the west. Research is under way on a fourth volume, South-West Marylebone, covering the area immediately west as far as Edgware Road. This research on the West End is balanced by ongoing work towards two volumes on Whitechapel that are expected to be published in 2022.

Amy Spencer from the Survey of London, part of The Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, explores the history of Oxford Street and looks at the rich sources held at London Metropolitan Archives (LMA).

Oxford Street’s evolution into a destination for shopping

Oxford Street is a vestige of the Roman road network, serving as part of an important suburban route extending westwards from the City. This major highway was known until the eighteenth century as Tyburn Road, a name derived from a brook that has long since been obscured by urban development. Oxford Street’s former name still carries associations of the gallows that stood on the site of the present junction at Marble Arch from at least the twelfth century. In the eighteenth century the brook was culverted, the gallows were moved, and the thoroughfare was increasingly known as Oxford Street. This name had already been established for some time, reflecting the street’s use as the main route to Oxford. While its emergence predated the start of bourgeois development on the Cavendish–Harley estate from the 1710s, its use and adoption conveniently helped to dispel the street’s notoriety as the last route of condemned prisoners.

By charting the history of building development, transport networks and social, cultural and economic life along Oxford Street to the present day, the new volume offers insights into the street’s appeal as a centre for shopping. Through the new research it has been possible to pinpoint Oxford Street’s transition into a major shopping destination to the 1770s. By this time, executions had ended at Tyburn and the road was resurfaced with granite blocks. Shopkeepers perceived the opportunity to establish shops, mostly connected with the drapery trades, within reach of the affluent residents of Mayfair and Marylebone. At this time, most Oxford Street shops were still only one house wide and one room deep, with manufacture, finishing and storage relegated to back rooms, basements, cellars and yards. R. B. Schnebbelie’s 1811 drawing of a basket workshop at 314 Oxford Street is an unusual view of a working space connected with retailing, showing a vaulted cellar, probably under the pavement, used for weaving and storing baskets.

In the nineteenth century the concentration of small shops based in single houses gave way to shopping bazaars and, from the 1870s, department stores. The arrival of improved transport links, such as the opening of the Central Line at Oxford Circus Station in 1900, followed by the Bakerloo Line in 1906 and the Northern Line at Tottenham Court Road in 1907, widened Oxford Street’s appeal to shoppers from the suburbs and further afield, securing its status as London’s most continuously successful shopping street.

Despite the dominance of shops and stores, Oxford Street has also long been a hub for entertainment, including restaurants, music halls, theatres, pubs and cinemas. Illustrations in LMA’s collections show the entrance to the Princess’s Theatre at 73 Oxford Street in the late 1840s and the Noah’s Ark pub in the 1870s.

The Survey’s volume on Oxford Street

There is a long record of experiment and adaptive innovation in the Survey of London series. One of the complications of the research on Oxford Street was that portions of the thoroughfare had already been covered lightly in volumes on St Anne’s, Soho, St James’s North and the Grosvenor estate (Volumes 31–34, 39 and 40). Aside from the reuse of a chapter on the Pantheon, the celebrated entertainment venue first built to designs by James Wyatt in 1769–72, the new volume presents entirely new work.

Oxford Street is organized in a linear format, covering both sides of the street from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch. The twelfth chapter (of twenty-two) on Oxford Circus examines the complicated story of planning and acquiring ground for John Nash’s circus of 1816–21, unsuccessful plans for a commemorative pillar at its centre, and the rebuilding of the four segments to designs by Henry Tanner junior between 1911 and 1923. The rest of the volume is devoted to the north and south sides of Oxford Street, with chapters covering discrete chunks between the cross-streets. The largest department stores that guzzled up entire blocks, such as Selfridges and John Lewis, are the foci of individual chapters.

The Survey’s use of sources at LMA

As part of its research, the Survey uses a wide range of primary sources held at LMA. The Middlesex Deeds Registry (MDR) is a vital and important source for the Survey, along with Building Act case files (GLC/AR/BR) and District Surveyors’ Returns. One of the highlights for the Oxford Street study was Tallis’s London Street Views (1838–40), which delineated frontages along the north and south sides of the street, recording many of the occupants of the shops and their trades. Several extracts are reproduced in the volume, including the premises of the cabinet-makers and furnishers Jackson & Graham. The shop boasted a new and elaborate stucco shopfront with Venetian display windows and the badge of ‘His Ottoman Majesty, the Sultan’, earned after the firm had won a commission from Mustafa Reșid Pasha, the Turkish ambassador, to present Mahmud II with a suite of furniture. The Survey has also made use of business and company archives at LMA, including records relating to J. Lyons & Company (ACC/3527) and London Transport (ACC/1297).

Photographs, drawings and maps in the volume

Oxford Street contains more than 350 illustrations, including drawings and maps by Helen Jones, the Survey’s architectural illustrator. A large number of drawings in LMA’s collection of Building Act case files provided the basis for new illustrations, such as drawings of Frascati’s Restaurant, Waring & Gillow, Marshall & Snelgrove and John Lewis. New photography has been carried out by Chris Redgrave of Historic England with financial support from the Portman Estate. The volume also contains photographs of the sights and atmosphere of Oxford Street, recorded by Lucy Millson-Watkins in 2015, as well as historic photographs showing buildings and the cultural life of the street in equal measure. One such photograph provides a glimpse of a show in the hall of the London College of Fashion for the Queen Mother’s visit in 1965.

The volume has been edited by Andrew Saint and produced in the Survey’s current house style, designed by Catherine Bankhurst under the supervision of Emily Lees at the Paul Mellon Centre. The volume is now available from Yale Books.