Former Morris Garage

MATERIALS: red brick with yellow-brown limestone dressings; clay tile roof.

PLAN: as originally built, the main range contained a paint shop, showroom and two offices on the ground floor, with further office space above. The chauffeurs' room occupied the small single-storey block to the north. The central archway led through into a large open parking area, behind which was the old stable block which served as Morris's workshop between 1902 and 1914. This structure has now been demolished, as has the majority of the main building with the exception of the front and side walls and the chauffeurs' room.

EXTERIOR: the main facade to Longwall Street is of two storeys and seven bays, with an additional single-storeyed bay (the chauffeurs' room) to the far right. The style is that of the early C18, with a sturdy wooden modillion cornice beneath the hipped roof, brick pilasters dividing the bays, and triple keystones above the ground-floor windows; the Oxford Journal (13 July 1910) remarked that 'for the Longwall Street elevation there seems nothing to which even our City Fathers can take exception'. The lower windows are 6/9-pane casements, opening at the top, while the first-floor windows are 6/6-pane sashes. The taller middle three bays form a pedimented centrepiece, with a circular window in a carved surround set in the tympanum. Below, the broad central archway has a segmental head and a channelled stone surround with a triple keystone; the doors themselves have square sunken panels and square-paned overlights. A 'VR' letterbox is set into the right-hand pilaster. The bays on either side of the centrepiece have slightly smaller elliptical-headed openings, again with triple keystones. That to the left is a second doorway which once gave access to the paint shop, while that to the right is a large window, originally looking into the sales room. In the outer bays are downpipes, their rainwater heads bearing the date 1910. The return wall to the north-west, with its corbelled end stack, also survives; the chauffeurs' room beyond is treated as a single-storey continuation of the main facade.

The rear elevation, facing the city wall, was originally a plainer version of the main facade, but has now been wholly rebuilt to a new design in brown brick with lead facings. This is not of special interest.

INTERIOR: apart from simple dado mouldings in the chauffeurs' room, no original internal features survive. The rebuilt interiors are not of special interest.