Reg Little on an exhibition of photos featured in The Oxford Times over its first 150 years

From Tutankhamun to Post-Impressionists, The Oxford Times has been reporting on major exhibitions being staged at the Ashmolean Museum over many decades.

But this week it was our turn to be featured in a special display at the world-famous museum, to bring to an end our 150th birthday celebrations.

Pictures from the many thousands in our archive have been selected for The Oxford Times exhibition which opened to the public at the Ashmolean on Tuesday and will run into the new year.

The exhibition has been created in the museum cafe, fittingly next door to the Ashmolean’s Reading and Writing permanent display, which features inscriptions on baked clay tablets and stone dating from 1375BC.

The Oxford Times may not quite match that. But it certainly goes back to the reign of Queen Victoria with pictures of people on the frozen River Thames at Folly Bridge in 1891.

In the days before Thames Conservancy improved the river flow the Thames would often freeze in winter.

And a picture from 1897 captures the opening of Oxford Town Hall by the Prince of Wales, later to be crowned Edward VII.

The cafe previously displayed images from the museum’s famous Egyptian collection, but a recent refurbishment offered the chance to mark a piece of history altogether closer to home.

The first edition of The Oxford Times and Midland Counties Advertiser which appeared on September 6, 1862, and priced two pence, will shortly be added to the display.

In its opening editorial, readers are told: “In issuing our first number, we must throw ourselves on the kind indulgence of our friends and the public generally, and trust they will overlook these deficiencies which are unavoidable in commencing a new undertaking.

“Intelligence and advertisements have poured in so copiously that even with the addition of a supplement, decided upon almost at the last moment, we have been unable to carry out our wishes to avail ourselves of many communications which have been forwarded to us for insertion. We shall be better prepared for the future.”

The preparation for the exhibition has certainly not been wanting.

Ashmolean spokesman Tom Jowett said: “We had been looking to change the display in the cafe. The Oxford Times has been reporting local news and what is happening for so long, and a significant number of the 800,000 visitors we see every year are local people.

“This exhibition means that when they come for a coffee after looking around all the ancient history in the museum, they can enjoy something more personal and local.”

Some of the selections are especially timely. With the streets outside the Ashmolean buzzing with people heading for the St Giles Fair, there is a picture taken of the fair back in the 1950s.

To mark the centenary of the First World War, there is a photograph taken in August 1914 of the Banbury Terriers marching to Christ Church, where they were briefly quartered at the college.

And in a week when the Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, was in Oxford, there is a photograph of his father walking in the rain across Radcliffe Square from 1997.

As we move to autumn, the Ashmolean curators chose to show museum visitors how The Oxford Times captured events on Guy Fawkes Night in 1962, when celebration turned to violence in Cornmarket as revellers ran amok.

The fact that one of the Ashmolean’s best known pieces is the lantern that Guido Fawkes held in his hand on November 5, 1603, in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament, makes for a fitting link with the museum’s collection.

Also dating from the 1960s is a image from our coverage of the Great Train Robbery. Police are shown in 1963 guarding the robbers’ hide out at Leatherslade Farm, Oakley, near Thame.

The first visitor to the exhibition was Mrs Claire Undy, a retired librarian who had worked in Old Marston.

Mrs Undy, of Headington, a regular visitor to the Ashmolean, said: “I have been in Oxford since 1968 and come to the Ashmolean two or three times a week.

“I think most of the photographs were taken long before I came here. But I well remember the bus that had its roof ripped off having driven under the bridge at the railway station,” she said referring to a 1973 image of an accident that left three injured.

“It would be good to see more photographs. Perhaps they could be replaced with others.”

Beside the photographs are plaques giving details of some of the controversial stories that we have carried over the last century and a half.

Doubtless, newcomers to the city will be taken aback to read learn the story of the Cutteslowe Wall, erected in 1934 to prevent residents in Oxford City Council’s Cutteslowe council estate from being able to walk through a private housing development.

The subsequent battles and legal challenges leading to its eventual destruction would fill our pages for decades.

The Oxford Times, however, cannot claim to be Oxfordshire’s oldest newspaper. The Oxford Journal was in circulation from 1753 to 1928.

Before that The Mercurius was published in January 1642 and continued until 1645, the year which saw the appearance of The Oxford Gazette.

At that time Parliament was then being held in Oxford, where King Charles II was living. When he and his court returned to London, the following year, they took the paper with them.

It became the London Gazette, the Government’s official journal of history.

When we celebrated our centenary in September 1962, we hosted a dinner at The Queen’s College, Oxford, attended by more than 100 guests, representing all phases of civic, county and university life.

Topping that was always going to be difficult but, in a way, a place alongside the Discovering Tutankhamun exhibition at the Ashmolean must come close.