7, Linton Road

House at 7 Linton Road

This is a house built in 1910 by architect Arthur Hamilton Moberly for his mother, Mrs R.C. Moberly, on a corner plot in the North Oxford suburb. It occupies a rectangular plan and is designed in Neo-Georgian style.

The house is constructed of brick laid in English bond, with pale red stretchers and buff and blue headers. Deeper red brick is used for window dressings, the first-floor band and raised quoins. A wooden eaves cornice with bracket blocks runs around the building. The roof is hipped with plain tiles, sprocketted eaves, and tile-hanging to the gablets and dormer cheeks. Symmetrical brick ridge stacks with arched panels crown the roof. Ornamental cast iron rainwater heads and boxed sashes with glazing bars feature throughout, with dormer casements fitted with leaded glazing.

The house rises two storeys with an attic. The front facing Northmoor Road displays a symmetrical composition with three sashes to the centre and full-height canted bays to either side. Four two-light roof dormers pierce the attic storey. The doorway sits to the left of centre, framed by quoined jambs and a panelled wooden hood on shaped brackets. The door itself is six-panelled with a lions' head knocker and leaded over-light. The south end fronting Linton Road presents a two-window elevation with a four-light dormer beneath a twin hipped roof. The north end features a canted first-floor oriel and a single-storey service bay which extends to provide garage and garden pavilion accommodation. The rear elevation contains a large leaded stair window.

The interior begins with a panelled lobby opening into the stair hall through a classical arched door. The stairs are Georgian in character, with turned balusters, panelled dado, and a stop-chamfered ceiling beam. Stick balusters continue to the landing. The drawing room occupies the south end and features wall piers flanking a wide fireplace with pulvinated cornice and turquoise tiles. The dining room to the north has a classical arch over an alcove at its far end, with canted corners containing doors, a china cupboard and fireplace. Both rooms display ceiling cornices and picture rails that form entablatures. The rooms are separated by two-panel doors set in bolection frames. A door to the kitchen, services and service stair is located at the north end, with service doors of simpler four-panel type. The bedrooms contain original narrow cast iron fireplaces and feature arched cupboards and alcoves. An original linen cupboard survives. The attic storey also retains cast iron fireplaces and Arts and Crafts catches to casements, with a large sitting room at the south end displaying a pulvinated frieze to the fireplace.

The garden wall to Linton Road includes two plank gates with original strap hinges and piers with moulded brick cornicing. The railings are renewed.

Linton Road was developed between 1894 and 1912, opening off the Banbury Road between Number 98 and the Parklands Hotel, as the North Oxford suburb expanded northward from its origins around 1860 on land owned by St. John's College. The College exercised strict control over the suburb's development, vetting all designs for quality and ensuring adequate provision of front walls, railings and rear gardens. According to tradition, Mrs R.C. Moberly never took up residence in this house as it was considered too small. Arthur Hamilton Moberly later became one of the architects of the influential Peter Jones store on Sloane Square in the 1930s.

The building remains complete and unaltered except for minor extensions at the north end and the removal of a scullery and pantry partition. It occupies its corner plot with exquisite styling reminiscent of a miniature country house, featuring beautifully graded brickwork, cornice and roofscape. The interior achieves great dignity on a very compact scale through the discreet use of panelling, cornicing, bolection frames and pulvinated friezes, lending a simplified William-and-Mary character enhanced by the splendid turquoise tiles in the drawing room and narrow cast iron grates upstairs, which display Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau elegance.