13, Norham Gardens

A former house, now an academic institution, built in 1869 and substantially altered in 1906-07. The building is dated by a carved stone roundel on the façade.

The original house was designed by William Wilkinson, the estate architect, for Thomas Dallin, a tutor at Queen's College. It was extended in 1906-07 by Nathaniel Harrison for Sir William Osler Bt (1849-1919), Regius Professor of Medicine, who occupied the house until 1919.

The building is constructed of red brick with stone window dressings and gable copings. It features plain tile roofs and tall brick chimneys with projecting header strips. The structure is High Victorian in style, with two storeys, an attic, and a basement, arranged around an irregular rectangular plan. Stone mullion windows with sashes, mostly plate glass, are used throughout.

The south facade, which faces the garden, displays Wilkinson's original design with two gables and stair windows between them. Harrison's extension projects to the left with a canted bay window rising to deep flat eaves on shaped brackets, and a narrow dormer with gablet. The earlier left gable is advanced relative to the right gable and retains a first-floor canted bay with a hipped roof. The ground floor has been extended forward beneath both gables into canted bays. The left bay has a stone-coped parapet and side door; the right bay is rectangular with French doors opening onto a terrace. The terrace is stone-balustrated with steps down to the garden. The main stair windows were altered by Harrison; the upper portions retain original four-light mullion windows with intricate lead patterning, while a timber-framed oriel with herringbone brickwork was inserted at first-floor level. A brick cornice with mock machicolations and a hipped leaded dormer sits above. A wooden conservatory, rebuilt in the 1980s in truncated form, stands to the far right in front of a small walled yard and lower service range.

The entrance facade has a canted porch by Harrison and two gables by Wilkinson, the centre gable featuring arched attic lights. The rear elevation, facing the road, is plainer in treatment, with a basement, gables, and a side door to the service wing.

The interior contains an open-well staircase with unusual turned newels and spindle balusters. Doorframes are moulded with an ovolo profile; doors have six vertical panels downstairs and four panels upstairs. The ground floor was remodelled for Osler in classical style, featuring Ionic columns in the hall, mock panelling and a mahogany fireplace with swag decoration in the former dining room, and Osler's study with a complete set of dark-stained bookshelves and a fireplace with fluted pilasters and three portrait overmantel panels. Window seats are incorporated. Original ceilings with stop-chamfered cross beams are missing. The first floor retains a corner desk in the south-east room, said to have been used by Osler, although fireplaces have been removed.

Norham Gardens was the first road laid out by St. John's College as part of the North Oxford suburb, which evolved from about 1860 on college land. St. John's exercised strict control over development, vetting all designs for quality and ensuring adequate provision of front walls, railings, and rear gardens. Number 13 was built as a model house and was illustrated in Wilkinson's English Country Houses (1870 and 1875) and in Viollet-le-Duc's Habitations Modernes (1875). Sir William Osler occupied the house from 1907 to 1919, maintaining it as an open house known as "The Open Arms" to foster the study of medicine with particular links to North America. Subsequent Regius Professors of Medicine, including Sir Richard Doll, lived here until 1979. The house is now owned by Green College and houses a collection of Osler publications and memorabilia. Osler is renowned for raising the profile of medical ethics and doctor-patient relationships.