7, Linton Road Oxford, England

Text courtesy of Historic England. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.

612/0/10135 LINTON ROAD 07-OCT-08 7

GV II BUILDING: House

DATE: 1910

ARCHITECT: Arthur Hamilton Moberly

MATERIALS: Brick, in English bond, with pale red stretchers and buff/blue headers; deeper red brick window dressings, first-floor band and raised quoins. Wooden eaves cornice with bracket blocks. Hipped plain tile roof with sprocketted eaves and tile-hanging to gablets and dormer cheeks. Symmetrical brick ridge stacks with arched panels. Ornamental cast iron rainwater heads. Boxed sashes with glazing bars; dormer casements with leaded glazing.

PLAN: Rectangular

FAÇADE: Neo-Georgian style. 2 storeys and attic. Front to Northmoor Road has 3 sashes to centre, and full-height canted bays to either side. Four 2-light roof dormers. Doorway to left of centre with quoined jambs and panelled wooden hood on shaped brackets. Door with 6 chamfered panels, lions' head knocker and leaded over-light. South end gives 2-window front to Linton Road, with 4-light dormer under twin hipped roof. North end has canted first-floor oriel, and single-storey service bay extended to provide garage and garden pavilion. Rear has large leaded stair window.

INTERIORS: panelled lobby with classical arched door to stair hall. Stairs in Georgian style with turned balusters, panelled dado, and stop-chamfered ceiling beam. Stick balusters to landing. Drawing room across south end has wall piers flanking wide fireplace with pulvinated cornice and turquoise tiles. Dining room has classical arch over alcove at north end, and canted corners with doors/ china cupboard/ fireplace. Ceiling cornices and picture rail form `entablatures' to both rooms. 2-panel doors in bolection frames. Door to kitchen, services and service stair at north end, service doors of simpler 4-panel type. Bedrooms with original narrow cast iron fireplaces, and arched cupboards and alcoves. Original linen cupboard. Attic also has cast iron fireplaces, Arts and Crafts catches to casements, and large sitting room at south end with pulvinated frieze to fireplace.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: garden wall to Linton Road has two plank gates with original strap hinges, and piers with moulded brick cornicing. Railings are renewed.

HISTORY: The North Oxford suburb evolved from about 1860 on land owned by St. John's College, with the College gradually making available discreet sets of building plots to lease as it sought to ensure a firm financial future for its endowment. St. John's kept strict control of the development, both in terms of the scale of the houses, and their distribution. All designs were vetted for quality, and to ensure adequate provision of front walls and railings, and rear gardens. In the late C19 Oxford began to grow still northward, and Linton Road was developed between 1894 and 1912, opening off the Banbury Road between Number 98 and the Parklands Hotel. Number 7 Linton Road was built by Arthur Hamilton Moberly for his mother Mrs. R.C. Moberly in 1910. It is said she never took up residence because the house was considered too small. Moberly was later one of the architects of the influential Peter Jones store on Sloane Square in the 1930's.

SOURCES: T. Hinchcliffe, North Oxford (1992); 1910 plans in City Engineer's Archives NS 1652, Centre for Oxfordshire Studies.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: Number 7 Linton Road occupies a corner plot in the North Oxford suburb, and is exquisitely styled like a miniature country house, with beautifully graded brickwork, cornice and roofscape outside, and great dignity on a very compact scale within. Discreet use of panelling, cornicing, bolection frames and pulvinated friezes give a simplified William-and-Mary character, but the splendid turquoise tiles in the drawing room and the narrow cast iron grates upstairs have Arts and Crafts/Art Nouveau elegance. Complete and unaltered, except for minor extensions at north end and remov