Oxford House

Oxford House is a settlement headquarters built in 1891-2 to designs by the eminent architect Sir Arthur Blomfield. The building served as the permanent home for a pioneering social initiative established in Bethnal Green in 1884, where Oxford University undergraduates lived and undertook social work among the poor of East London. A later extension dating from around 2002 to the north lacks special interest.

Exterior

Oxford House is a substantial three-storey building with basement and attic, executed in a spare Tudor Revival style. Constructed of red brick with brick chimneys and a tiled roof, the building consciously evokes the architecture of an English manor house. The symmetrical southern façade runs to seven bays, with shallow two-bay cross-wings under pitched roofs. These cross-wings terminate in gables with stone hexagonal ball finials, coping and kneelers. The main roof is hipped with a broad, flat area along the ridge (originally fitted with a timber balustrade) and a timber cupola at the western end.

To the west stands the former clubhouse of 1894, comprising three bays with a hipped roof. The outer ground-floor bays of the clubhouse, now windows, originally functioned as entrance doors. Most windows throughout the building are original timber mullion and transom fittings with diamond-paned leaded lights, varying between four-light and nine-light configurations. The attic dormers, also with timber mullions and transoms, have tiled hipped roofs.

The three-bay western elevation contains the original principal entrance, set back within an arched opening with carved stops. The entrance doors (replacements) are reached by a short flight of steps. A foundation stone on the recessed porch wall records simply "November 30th 1891". A Victorian post box is set into the wall next to the entrance. Windows on the western elevation are arranged in groups of three with carved brick mullions and feature perpendicular arched tops.

Extensions to the north and east dating from around 2002 are easily distinguishable from the original building and lack special interest. These additions have a basement and either one or two upper storeys. Original iron area railings run along part of the building's south front.

Interior

The interior has been remodelled several times with partitions and suspended ceilings added, but the floor plans reveal that the solid brick walls remain largely in their original configuration. Fireplaces survive in several rooms, including a large Tudor-arched fireplace with carved rosettes in the spandrels on the ground floor (now the café, originally the dining room), where octagonal piers and moulded beams also remain. Numerous smaller cast iron fireplaces with decorative panels and tiled reveals survive on the upper floors.

The first and second floors have spinal corridors off which individual offices (formerly students' bedrooms) open. The timber architraves and panelled door reveals survive, though the doors themselves have been lost. The stair, located in the building's north-west corner, is concrete with a twisted metal balustrade and polished hardwood handrail.

The Chapel

The third-floor attic houses the chapel, the best-preserved part of the building. This space is panelled in wood with a timber shallow arched-braced roof approaching a barrel vault in form. A narrow Tudor-arched arcade with octagonal columns runs along the northern side. The east end is raised by two steps in the High Church manner and features a timber altar and an exceptional timber triptych.

The triptych comprises a central painted panel flanked by carved doors, all decorated with tracery carving. The painting, by Alfred U Soord and dated 1914, depicts the crucifixion and is set into an ogee frame with quatrefoils to the spandrels. The triptych's top has a cornice carved with vines and a row of finials along its crest. The inner faces of the doors are decorated with coloured and gilt paint, showing subjects from the Old Testament on the left and the symbols of the Evangelists on the right.

At the west end of the chapel, creating a small narthex, stands a richly-carved Neo-Jacobean oak screen surmounted by strapwork carving, a wooden cross and obelisk finials. The panelling at the rear of the chapel is inscribed with names of the Fallen of the First World War, serving as the institution's war memorial. Various plaques affixed to the panelling commemorate people connected with Oxford House. Particularly poignant are those to Leonard Percival Cooper, who died in the Boer War, and to two undergraduates of Oxford House who died in their twenties: Philip Moor (died 1887, aged 24) and Frederick Yorre Seawell (died 1890, aged 25).

Historical Context

Oxford House was built as a permanent headquarters for a settlement established in Bethnal Green in 1884, placing it in the vanguard of the settlement movement. This movement encouraged privileged schoolboys and undergraduates from England's grandest public schools and universities to form colonies in very poor urban areas, where students would live and undertake social work, some in preparation for ordination.

Oxford House was closely connected with New College and Keble College in Oxford, the latter founded in 1870 in memory of John Keble, leader of the Tractarian Movement which sought to recover the Catholic heritage of the Church of England. A report from 1894 described Oxford House's aims: "that Oxford men may take part in the social and religious work of the Church in East London; that they may learn something of the life of the poor; may try to better the condition of the working classes as regards health and recreation, mental culture and spiritual teaching; and may offer an example, so far as in them lies, of a simple and religious life". Writer Walter Besant described the settlements as "lamps in a dark place". Yet it was sometimes observed that the undergraduates gained as much from their time in the East End as the locals did – Henry Scott Holland, a canon of St Paul's Cathedral, joked at a Mansion House fundraising dinner for Oxford House in 1891 that the settlements provided a refuge for "the surplus of educated gentlemen".

Oxford House was founded in the same year as Toynbee Hall, and some rivalry existed between the two initiatives. Oxford House promoted High Church spirituality alongside social action, whereas Toynbee Hall, established by dons at Balliol College, was more secular in tone. Having raised funds marginally more successfully, Oxford House opened in a disused school room (since demolished) in September 1884, just two months before Toynbee Hall was established in purpose-built premises in Whitechapel.

By the 1890s, sufficient monies had been collected to build a new headquarters for Oxford House and a site was acquired on Derbyshire Street. The new building was commissioned by the Head of Oxford House, and later Bishop of London, Reverend Arthur Foley Winnington-Ingram. It was to be the private domain of the settlers, and included living quarters for twenty undergraduates and the Head of House, common rooms (including a Fives court), and a chapel. Incorporated into the design was a clubhouse for locals, where social activities organised by the settlers took place; this was completed in 1894. Originally there was limited interconnection between the two buildings, although their exterior architecture was unified. The clubs provided lectures, games and other activities in a controlled and alcohol-free environment, to draw men away from public houses. The settlement also offered a Poor Man's Lawyer to help locals with negligence claims at work, and purchased sports facilities (swimming pools and playing fields) for local recreation. The new building was inaugurated in 1892 by the Duke of Connaught, in a ceremony attended by the archbishops of Canterbury and York, six bishops and other ecclesiastical luminaries, underscoring the settlement's religious purpose.

The Architect and Artist

The architect of Oxford House was Sir Arthur William Blomfield, son of the Bishop of London, a prominent high churchman who founded several churches in Bethnal Green, including St Peter's and St James the Less. Blomfield junior was architect of the Royal College of Music, London (1894) and the rebuilding of the nave of Southwark Cathedral. He also remodelled and extended countless churches for High Church worship, including St Peter's, Eaton Square, and built chapels for Eton College, Malvern College and Selwyn College, Cambridge. At Oxford House, he worked for a similar client – dons from Oxford University – but to a much smaller budget than his usual commissions and in a far more cramped, urban location.

Like Toynbee Hall, the architecture of Oxford House was in the domestic style of the 16th or 17th century. The social theory that underpinned the settlement movement was that the traditional order of rural society, where the benevolent gentry supported and moderated the behaviour of the working classes, was utterly lacking in the East End. Supporters of Oxford House invited undergraduates to "come and be the squires of East London", and thus the building was designed to evoke a country manor house.

Alfred U Soord was born in Sunderland in 1868, son of Thomas Soord and Jane Usher (from whom his middle name was taken), and died in 1915 aged 46. He studied at the Von Herkomer School of Art in Bushey, Watford and exhibited at the annual Royal Academy exhibitions from 1907-1911. Soord's most famous painting was "The Lost Sheep", which shows a haloed shepherd rescuing a sheep from a steep-sided crevice.

Later Alterations

Oxford House was extended to the east after the Second World War to provide a new hall. Around 2002, this extension was replaced with a two-storey building by All Clear Designs Ltd (not of special interest) housing a theatre and studio space, with a link building running along the north side of Oxford House providing level access and a new entrance foyer. The original building is now abutted on two sides by extensions to the lower storeys only; only a single-storey range on its northern side has been entirely lost.