Oxford boundary markers: Godstow Road bridge (1892)
[City coat of arms showing
ox crossing ford]
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F. W. A N S E L L
M A Y O R
W. S. C A R V E R
S H E R I F F
This stone is set into the south wall of the bridge over the River Thames on the Godstow Road, near the Trout pub. It is not a listed structure.
It belongs to the following series of boundary stones that were set up at the time of the Mayor's perambulation of 1892 (the first such inspection to take place after the 1889 Oxford boundary change):
- Opposite Headley Way
- Sunnymead
- Canal towpath
- Hogacre Ditch
- Woodlands Road
- Woodstock Road
- Iffley Meadows
- Port Meadow (probably)
This map shows the new 1889 boundary of the city marked in blue.
Frederick Ansell was Mayor of Oxford in 1891/2, and there was a special perambulation that year.
William Stevens Carver (1859–1917), the Sheriff of Oxford who would also have been named on this stone, was at the time of the 1891 census a 32-year-old accountant & auditor who lived at 7 Longworth Road with his wife Eliza and their three young daughters. He was the City Accountant from 1894 until his death (obituary in the Oxford Journal Illustrated of 26 December 1917, p. 9).
Jackson’s Oxford Journal reported on 4 November 1899 that Godstow Bridge needed to be repaired, but that athough it had been erected during the existence of Godstow Nunnery, no claim for its maintenance would be established against the successors in title of the Abbey estates. This boundary stone on the bridge was crucial in splitting the responsibility for its repairs: the road leading to it from Wolvercote to the stone was within the county and repairable by Woodstock District Council, while the part from the stone to Wytham up to the Berkshire boundary came under Oxford and was repairable by the city as a public highway,