Carfax Tower – Original Painting

Oxford captures centuries of history.

Wherever you are in Oxford, you see the mediaeval. Whether it’s a glimpse along the rooftops or full Gothic architecture, with carved stone gargoyles, crenellations and cobbled courtyards. With a city as old as Oxford, it’s only natural. So why is this called Carfax tower?

At time of initial draft, I don’t know, but I will research and fill in the details here.
The name “Carfax” comes from the French word carrefour, meaning crossroads, which reflects the tower’s location at the city’s main junction.

Battling modernity

From the narrow streets and impressive buildings by Carfax tower, Oxford feels old. Crossing the street can be a perilous affair, and the volume of traffic has grown beyond the capacity of the streets. Occasionally, there’s stillness at the junction when the pedestrian crossing halts all traffic, briefly. A moment of tranquillity captured in time. Well on paper, at least.

The sound of the city continues, even as the vehicles are stopped. Will you imagine the noise or choose the stillness? More easily done with headphones, but I imagine Carfax has always been busy. Today it’s cars, but once it was horses and carts, carriages, along cobbles. Oxford has retained its cobble streets, in places. They feel quaint, but they would have been state of the art in their time, better than mud tracks in the rain, but probably as messy, in other ways, with so many horses using them.

Hard to imagine with our sanitised view of history.

The first figure you notice is the woman in jeans and red t shirt with long plaited black hair. After a while, more people emerge. A man in subfusc gown on a bicycle, or rather pushing it. Two people ahead of him. People sitting on the bench, a family group in front of the post box and yet more people by the bank. They’re easily lost in the architecture which dominates.

What is Carfax Tower?

The clock tower is all that remains of St. Martin’s Church, a 12-century building and the official City Church of Oxford between 1122 and 1896. The central part of this church was demolished to make room for road traffic, and the city church moved to All Saint’s Church.

Journey to the top of Carfax and see a fabulous view of Oxford and its cliche dreaming spires. Plenty of dreaming goes on in Oxford. For an ancient city, it has modern aspirations. The university is well established and can be set in its ways, but it’s also a breeding ground for new ideas, and, where the old meets the new, sparks fly.

Oxford, the ever changing city that never changes.

Behind Carfax tower is scaffolding, covering a building. Another development in an ever changing city and Oxford does change. The streets change all the time, if not their layout the shops, businesses and taverns do. Yet for all this change, Oxford always remains Oxford. Its main streets familiar and its customs passed down to future generations.

In the words of Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” – The more things change, the more they stay the same.