Grandpont

Grandpont is a mainly residential area in south Oxford. It lies to the west of the Abingdon Road, and is made up mainly of narrow streets that run perpendicular to the main road, with terraced late-Victorian and Edwardian houses.

It also contains the Grandpont Nature Park — a riverside park managed by Oxford City Council (gbmapping|SP510054). The park covers three hectares, and was created in 1985 on the site of a gas works which was demolished in 1960. The ornamental rail bridge, used to carry coal from the main line across the River Thames to the works, still stands.

The name of the area derives from the Grandpont, an 11th-century "stone causeway now known to survive within the core of the modern Abingdon Road for a distance of at least 700 metres south of the city centre."¹ The causeway was constructed by the first Norman lord of Oxford, Robert d'Oilly I.

References

# [http://www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk/2003-04/v16n3/05.shtml "What lies beneath"] — article by Annie Dodd for "Oxford Today", (2004).

External links

* [http://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/index/libraries_heritage_countryside/countryside/paths_for_all/oxford_city_paths_for_all.htm Paths for All] — Oxford City Council