Issue 48— March 2001
Jericho embraces the canal
The old ferry that ran from the bottom of what is now Combe Road. Mark Davies delves into our canalside history.
Jericho was Oxford's first planned suburb - formed over six decades of the 19th century as the open fields to the north of Worcester College were transformed into today's narrow streets of compact houses. The canal area resisted development longest due to the waterlogged terrain. When the canal reached Oxford in 1790, Castle Mill Stream was still an important branch of the Thames and highly prone to floods.
In 1829 Thomas Mallam auctioned some adjacent building plots near the Oxford University Press. A year later a coal merchant and boatbuilder called Henry Ward established Jericho's first cargo wharf.
Jericho proper, however, remained clustered around the Press for 20 more years. Apart from access via the iron works (now Lucy's) at Walton Well, the canal could be reached only by a track through allotments close to Worcester College wall. Ward's Wharf was still very isolated, cut off not just by marshiness but also by the neighbourhood cesspool.
It was not until 1860 with the building of Canal Street that residential Jericho moved closer to the canal. Even then the houses were a safe distance from the canal itself. The reputation of the canal workers also served to keep Jericho at bay. In her 1956 Scrapbook of Jericho Mrs C.M. Hawtrey observed that this part of Jericho was "first a marsh and refuge of footpads and then to all intents and purposes a slum, through which policemen preferred to walk in company." Local boaters were also "much addicted to a beer which went by the name of 'Fourpenny' and was extremely intoxicating."
The influence of the Ward family extended over several generations. Henry Ward financed a floating chapel for boatmen. And his son, William (1808-86) donated the land on which St Barnabas' Church was built in 1869. The canal and the community were also linked by the church. John Foster, sacristan for the first 40 years, sold coal from Ward's Wharf in the evenings, for instance. And the sons of another coalmerchant, William Herbert, were 'bearers of the incense boat'. Herbert was also the local ferryman, living in the now-vanished Ferry House at the end of what has been renamed Combe Road.
If the majority of Jericho's residents feared the boatmen it seems the Canal Company may in turn have been fearful of the reputation of Jericho itself. The Scrapbook recorded that two boys who visited Jericho frequently at this time were told to stay away at night, "for they would probably have rats' tails and oyster shells thrown at them."
The Company had long resisted building a bridge to allow Jericho's many railwaymen ready access to the station, and to allow its children access to the sports fields and bathing place at Tumbling Bay. As a result the ferry duly remained the only crossing, and was still operating in the 1960s. A second ferry, for school use, was provided by the Oxford Corporation at Nelson Street Wharf.
After World War Two the canal fell into decline. Fortunately the leisure possibilities were just evident, and a tradition of passenger-based operations began. After privatisation in 1963, the newly formed British Waterways Board ran its own hire fleet from Jericho, and by the 1990s there were two commercial boatyards side by side.
In 1972 the wharf at the end of Juxon Street was replaced by flats. At last after 150 years or so, residential Jericho had reached the water's edge and Jericho finally had its own bridge. Then in the 1990s the old Nelson Street Wharf site was also turned over to housing. Meanwhile, the College Cruisers hire fleet continues to prosper on the Ferry Wharf site, whilst the restaurant boat Rosamund the Fair shares Henry Ward's original wharf area with a much-needed boat repair centre.
It's taken nearly 200 years for the canal to be considered a true part of Jericho. The physical constraints and the insanitary conditions have been overcome, and the fear of the boatpeople curbed. But as British Waterways' hesitance over our community- based bid for their land shows, the authorities still seem reluctant to let Jericho's residents have a true stake in their own canal.
Mark Davies, Hythe Bridge Moorings.
Mark's book 'Our Canal in Oxford' available from bookshops, and also from Walton Stationers.
