Oxford mounting stones: Old Road, Headington
This early seventeenth-century mounting stone stands beside Old Road near the foot of Shotover Hill on the Headington side, on a section of grass just east of the bypass.
It originally stood where the bridge now passes over the bypass, and it spent some time in a garden in Kiln Lane before it was placed here.
Below There is also a mounting stone on the south (left) side of Shotover Hill, on the bank near the top.
A third stone is at the foot of Old Road in Wheatley
The stone on the left in Headington was erected in c.1630 by Dr Bracegirdle “out of good intent to ease passengers there to mount their horses” (Victoria County History of Oxfordshire, with footnote E 134, 7 Chas. I, Mich. 31). Bracegirdle was a physician of Oxford, and Bracegirdle Road in Wood Farm is named after him. The stone was moved here when the Eastern bypass was built.
Old Road was the main route from Oxford to London until the late eighteenth century, and passengers in carriages had to dismount and walk up Shotover Hill.
Henry Taunt's photograph of what appears to be a mounting stone at Shotover (although it is labelled as a milestone) does not seem to match either of the two above, nor the one at the Wheatley end.