University College cricket pavilion Abingdon Road 2023 David Clark smaller

The University College cricket pavilion (south-eastern façade) in 2023; image courtesy of David Clark.

This building is to the east of the Abingdon Road, down a short path opposite 232 Abingdon Road. It was built in 1913-14 and opened on 23 May 1914. The architect was Clough Williams-Ellis, who is best known for Portmeirion, his architectural fantasy village on the North Wales coast. The pavilion has been described by architectural historian David Clark as “one of the architect's most charming (pre-Portmeirion) buldings”.

In the nineteenth century, University College cricketers practiced and played on Cowley Marsh, where many of the colleges had their cricket fields and pavilions. (Magdalen Cricket Ground (off Magdalen Road, and after which Cricket Road is named) was where the University Cricket Club played until it relocated to the University Parks.) After the turn of the century there had been some discussion in college about a new cricket pitch, but no action was taken, probably due to lack of money. But in 1912-13 undergraduates gathered donations from past and senior members to fund a new cricket pavilion and pitch, to be built on a field on the southern side of Eastwyke Farm, off the Abingdon Road. This was land which University College owned but leased to the butcher Leonard Alden; in 1913 the college assured the local office of Agricultural Returns that sheep would not be grazed on the cricket ground.

Clough Williams-Ellis was almost certainly given the job of designing the new building via the college's Dean, Arthur Spencer Loat Farquharson, who was also honorary treasurer of the University College Cricket Club. Farquharson - a popular Fellow nicknamed ‘the Farq’ or ‘Farquhie’ - was a keen supporter of sports, and in particular of cricket. He had family living at Cumnor, just to the west of Oxford, where Williams-Ellis was carrying out a number of commissions. It is likely that Farquharson saw Williams-Ellis's work there and thought that his style would suit the proposed college pavilion and groundsman's cottage.

The builder was not a local firm, but Charles Elcock of Hartfield in Sussex, probably someone who Williams-Ellis had worked with before. The design of the building means that the cricketers who used it, and the groundsman and his family who lived in it, must have frequently come into contact. On the ground floor (raised up four feet so as to be above flood level), the large room at the front (opening out onto the colonnaded verandah) was the club room. Behind were dressing rooms, baths, showers and WCs for the cricketers, as well as the family's living room and the 'servery'. A central staircase led to the first floor where there were two bedrooms and two large storerooms, presumably for sports equipment. The clock- and bell tower at the front of the building has a glazed double door at first floor level, looking out over the cricket pitch and potentially leading on to the roof of the verandah. Decorative scrolls either side of this structure, shown on William-Ellis's original plans, were omitted, probably for reasons of cost.

In 1921 the living accommodation was occupied by the long-serving University College groundsman George King and his wife Eliza. They had previously lived in east Oxford (closer to the Cowley Marsh cricket fields mentioned above) and as a younger man George had worked as a 'professional cricketer' i.e. someone who taught undergraduates how to play.

Clough Williams-Ellis's plans for the University College cricket pavilion and groundsman’s cottage, August 1913. Courtesy of the Oxford City Council Archives. (Click on image to close)

University College Cricket pavilion Abingdon Rd CEDBP 2165NS 08 08 1913 4