Key Facts

• Size: 4,700 images
• Coverage: Oxford city, Oxford University, Oxfordshire
• Date range: 1620s-2000s (bulk: 1700—1899)

Background

The prints and drawings collection is dominated by views of the City and University of Oxford, and features distant views or panoramas, as well street scenes and studies of individual buildings.

The stately homes and landscape of the county of Oxfordshire are not neglected, though, and include the likes of Blenheim Park, Broughton Castle and Nuneham Courtenay.

Topographical views were originally presented in several ways – as illustrations to a growing number of antiquarian histories and guides, published in periodicals like the Gentleman’s Magazine, or for sale as loose prints to residents and visitors.

Although only affordable by the few, prints were the predecessors of the photographs and postcards that became popular from the second half of the 19th century. Our collection includes examples of most print-making techniques: woodcuts, copper plate engravings, etchings, aquatints, lithographs, steel-plate engravings.

Outstanding Engravers

Find out more about the key engravers and publishers in the history of Oxfordshire topographical print-making: Loggan, Boydell, Skelton, Le Keux, Whittock and Whessell.

Alfred Beesley Collection

Find out more about the prints and drawings by Alfred Beesley in the unique extra-illustrated of his 1841 History of Banbury.

Buckler and Minn collections

By kind permission of the Bodleian Library, Picture Oxon also presents copies of many Buckler and Minn topographical drawings.

John Buckler and John Chessell Buckler

Henry Minn

Evacustes Phipson

Supplementing Oxfordshire History Centre's prints and drawings collection is a small but delightful collection of watercolours of old Oxford houses by the artist, Evacustes Phipson, painted between 1890 and 1902, which capture aspects of the townscape that have since been lost.

Where else can I go?

The Bodleian Library (Weston Library) holds a great many topographical views of Oxford and Oxfordshire. Views can be found in the collections of these and other antiquaries:

• John Chessell Buckler (1793-1894) - view Bodleian catalogue
• Richard Gough (1735-1809) - view Bodleian catalogue
• Henry Hinton (1749-1816) and James Hunt (1795-1857) - view Bodleian catalogue; read Mary Clapinson's article in Oxoniensia, 37 (1972), 215-200, about the topographical collections of Hinton and Hunt
• Henry Minn (1870-1961) - view Bodleian catalogue
  
• Charles Francis Wyatt (1820-1906) - view Bodleian catalogue

Oxfordshire History Centre holds microfilm copies of some Buckler, Gough and Minn material (reference: MR2).