Headington Road is an arterial road in the east of Oxford, England. The road connects the junction of St Clements and Marston Road with the suburb of Headington, up Headington Hill. [1] When it reaches the Headley Way junction, it becomes London Road, as the Boundary Brook runs under the road at this point.
To the south is South Park, from which good views of the city centre with its historic university buildings can be seen. Also to the south on Gipsy Lane at the top of Headington Hill is the Headington campus of Oxford Brookes University, originally the Oxford Polytechnic.
Pullens Lane leads off to the north at the top of Headington Hill. Headington Hill Hall, built in 1824 for the Morrell family, local brewers, is nearby, with its associated Headington Hill Park bordering Headington Road to the north.
The road is designated the A420.
The road did not exist until 1775, when it was cut through the countryside as part of the scheme to replace the old route from Oxford to London (via Cheney Lane, Old Road, Shotover, and Wheatley) by a new road via Stokenchurch. Until that date, the road at the top of Headington Hill turned left into Cuckoo Lane, the former road to Old Headington. [1]
Headington Road is the home of the Oxford Spanish Civil War memorial which is dedicated to local residents who travelled to Spain to join the International Brigades to fight against fascist forces backed by Hitler and Mussolini during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
During the Spanish Civil War, 29 British people with connections to Oxfordshire joined the International Brigades, with a further two who joined POUM. [2] Plans to have an anti-fascist memorial in the city centre were rejected by Oxford City Council. [3]
Marston is a village in the civil parish of Old Marston about 2 miles (3 km) northeast of the centre of Oxford, England. It was absorbed within the city boundaries in 1991. It is commonly called Old Marston to distinguish it from the suburb of New Marston that developed between St. Clement's and the village in the 19th and 20th centuries. The A40 Northern Bypass, part of the Oxford Ring Road forms a long north-west boundary of the village and parish and a limb, namely a distributary, of the Cherwell forms the western boundary.
Headington is an eastern suburb of Oxford, England. It is at the top of Headington Hill overlooking the city in the Thames valley below, and bordering Marston to the north-west, Cowley to the south, and Barton and Risinghurst to the east. The life of the large residential area is centred upon London Road, the main road between London and Oxford.
The A420 is a road between Bristol and Oxford in England. Between Swindon and Oxford it is a primary route.
Headington Hill is a hill in the east of Oxford, England, in the suburb of Headington. The Headington Road goes up the hill leading out of the city. There are good views of the spires of Oxford from the hill, especially from the top of South Park.
South Park is a park on Headington Hill in east Oxford, England. It is the largest park within Oxford city limits. A good view of the city centre with its historic spires and towers of Oxford University can be obtained at the park's highest point, a favourite location for photographers.
Ralph Winston Fox was a British revolutionary, journalist, novelist, and historian, best remembered as a biographer of Lenin and Genghis Khan. Fox was one of the best-known members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) to be killed in Spain fighting against the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War.
Warneford Meadow is an area of 20 acres (8.1 ha) of natural grassland immediately south-east of the Warneford Hospital, in Headington, east Oxford, England. The Warneford Meadow is a wild space within urban Oxford. The area has been used by local residents as a public space for recreation for over 50 years.
(Alexander) Gavin Henderson, 2nd Baron Faringdon was a British Labour politician and pacifist. He is most known for his charity work, his heavy financial support of medical aid programmes, and for housing 40 child refugees fleeing Hitler-backed fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War.
Pullens Lane is in Headington, east Oxford, England. It is located at the top of Headington Hill, leading north off Headington Road to Jack Straw's Lane and Harberton Mead. The cul-de-sac Pullens Field leads off west from Pullens Lane.
Morrell Avenue is a residential tree-lined road in Headington, east Oxford, England.
Thora Silverthorne, also known as "Red Silverthorne", was a British Communist, healthcare activist, and a nanny for Somerville Hastings, and former president of the Socialist Medical Association (SMA). She is most known for her service to the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, and for her roles in helping to found both Britain's National Health Service (NHS), and co-founding Britain's first union for rank and file nurses.
Alexander Wheeler Wainman (1913-1989) was a British photographer, Quaker, and Slavonic Scholar at the University of British Columbia. He is most known for his work as a frontline medical volunteer for the Republican government and anti-fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War, and for the large collection of photographs he took during the war, which was published posthumously.
Old Road is a long street in Headington, east Oxford, England, extending into Oxfordshire as a road east of Oxford, to Littleworth near Wheatley. It is part of the main old road between Oxford and London until the late 18th century, passing over Shotover Hill. Nowadays it crosses the Oxford Ring Road (A4142) with a bridge.
The Oxford Spanish Civil War memorial is a monument in Oxford dedicated to the 31 known local residents who fought in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) against Nationalist forces. Erected and unveiled in 2017, the memorial is located close to South Park, near the base of Headington Hill by the junction of Headington Road and Morrell Avenue. The memorial is dedicated to all the volunteers with links to Oxfordshire who supported the Republicans and inscribed onto the front are the names of the six volunteers in the International Brigades who were killed during the war.
John Pascal Rickman (1910–1937) was a British communist activist who was killed during the Spanish Civil War. Before the war, he dropped out from Lincoln College of the University of Oxford, and became an expert on English church architecture, took part in the Battle of Cable Street, and became involved in various religious and political organisations which aimed to better the conditions of the working class, including the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).
Edward Cooper (1912-1937) was a British actor, communist activist, and newspaper worker, who died fighting for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. He was also a close friend of Ralph Winston Fox, and John Cornford, and is memorialised on the Oxford Spanish Civil War memorial.
Anthony Carritt (1914-1937) was a British left-wing activist and a member of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. He and his brother Noel Carritt were ambulance drivers at the Battle of Brunete, and the two brothers fought against Spanish fascists backed by both Hitler and Mussolini. Anthony Carritt was assumed to have been killed in an airstrike after he went missing during the Battle of Brunete and was never found despite his brother spending days searching for him.
The Carritt family is an English political family based in Oxford, notable for its deep involvement in anti-fascist activism, Marxist politics, and academic achievements within Oxford University. For much of the 20th century the involvement of the family revolved around the Communist Party of Great Britain, as various members have traditionally been members of the British communist movement and have served as notable anti-fascist and anti-colonial activists, spies, philosophers, professors, politicians, newspaper editors, and revolutionaries.
Noel Carritt (1910–1992) was a British communist activist, teacher, and volunteer for the International Brigades. Noel was born into the famous Carritt family, notable for their Marxist and anti-fascist politics which heavily influenced Noel. As a young man he saved German Jewish activist Liesel Carritt from being deported to Nazi Germany by agreeing to enter into a marriage of convenience.
Liesel Carritt was a teacher, translator, refugee, and later a communist revolutionary who fought against fascism alongside the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. As a teenager, Liesel and her German-Jewish family fled the Nazis and came to Oxford, England, where local people rescued them by providing them with the necessary financial security to ensure that the British government would not deport them back into the hands of the Nazis. Her father was the former senior editor of Weimar Germany's main liberal newspaper, the Frankfurter Zeitung.
51°45′11″N1°14′02″W / 51.753°N 1.234°W