Oriel Street
Oriel Street runs southwards to Oriel Square from the High Street, with Oriel's Rhodes Building to the east, and the shop at 102 High Street to the west. It is closed by bollards to through traffic.
It has always been in the parish of St Mary-the-Virgin. These houses facing Oriel Square to the south were also considered to be part of Oriel Street (which is the road on the right):
Oriel Street has had at least two other names:
- In the thirteenth century it was known as Shidyerestreet (with other variations).
- By 1762 it had become St Mary Hall Lane (corrupted by undergraduates into Skimmery Hall Lane), a name it had until the 1830s.
- In 1836 the name Oriel Street came into use, but the old name of St Mary Hall Lane lingered until 1840.
Jackson’s Oxford Journal on 13 February 1886 reported on a lecture about Oxford in the fourteenth century by J. Gilbert, who stated that:
The present Oriel-street was then known as Scydiard or Schydiard-street; its derivation is doubtful. Wood ascribes it to the writers on “schedes,” or parchments, a business which must have flourished considerably in Oxford before the advent of printing. Hearne, however, has this, “But I think it is the same with Shieldyard-street, and that therefore the shield makers formerly dwelt there.” He adduces no evidence for this, and it would appear to have been written rather in a spirit of contradiction, as Wood supports his statement by naming owners and dwellers whose names corresponded to their occupation.
The painting below by William Matthison shows Oriel Street in the early twentieth century.
The postcard below show Oriel Street from the south in about 1900, showing that at this time there was a cabstand with a cabmen's shelter opposite Oriel College.
The following businesses are listed under “St Mary Hall Lane” in Pigot’s Directory for 1823/4:
- Booksellers & Stationers: Thomas COMBE
- Book Binders: William HAYES
- Boot & Shoemakers: John HOLMES
- Printsellers, Carvers, & Gilders, & Picture frame makers: John WILLIAMS
- Saddlers, &c.: John LODER
- Tailors & Drapers: Charles FELDON
- Trunk & Packing Case Makers: J. LODER
There is a plaque on a house on the west side of Oriel Street that was restored and renamed Carter House after Jimmy Carter, former President of the USA.
The tennis court and theatre in Oriel Street
When Oxford's first theatre opened on the evening of Monday 1 July 1833, its address was given as St Mary Hall Lane.
When the theatre moved to George Street in 1836, the tennis court continued to operate as 11 & 12 Oriel Street. James Russell is listed as its proprietor in Hunt's Oxford Directory for 1846, and the 1851 census shows him described as a tennis court keeper and living on the premises with his wife and six children and his niece, plus three servants(a young man who was probably his assistant and another who was a marker at tennis, plus a girl who was a general servant).
Then on 25 July 1857 Jackson's Oxford Journal announced that “an elegant THEATRE has been erected by Mr. Jones, of Oxford, in RUSSELL'S TENNIS COURT, and that the Theatre Royal would open there on 3 August. This second theatre to operate in Oriel Street only opened during the vacation, and the tennis court appears to have continued alongside it, at least during the university term, as Oxford Journal reported on 29 October 1859 that the Prince of Wales the previous Tuesday “paid a visit to Russell’s tennis court, in Oriel-street, and played at tennis there for some time”.
This second theatre building closed permanently at the beginning of August 1859, and the tennis court appears to have closed at the same time, as by the time of the 1861 census James Russell was a billiard-room proprietor, living on the Iffley Road.
The site of the tennis court/theatre is now occupied by Oriel College's Harris Building (at the south-west end of Oriel Street).
Listed buildings in Oriel Street |
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West side, running north to south |
East side, running south to north |
