Broad Street is a wide street in central Oxford, England, just north of the former city wall.[1][2]
The street is known for its bookshops, including the original Blackwell's bookshop at number 50, located here due to the University of Oxford. Among residents, the street is traditionally known as The Broad[citation needed].
Pillar outside the Clarendon building at the junction of Broad Street and Catte StreetThe cross of granitesetts marking the location of the martyrs' execution at the western end of Broad Street.
The street developed alongside the town ditch in front of the city wall, which was built in AD 911.[6] It is a wide street, formerly called Horsemonger Street[7] because it was Oxford's horse market. The street's one remaining pub, a 16th or 17th-century timber-framed building next to Blackwell's bookshop, is appropriately called the White Horse.[8]
The city walls were rebuilt in local coral ragstone in 1226–40.[4] By the 16th or 17th century, improved artillery had made the walls obsolete, so the city divided the town ditch on the south side of Broad Street into a row of burgage plots, on which buyers built houses and later shops. Most of the wall beside Broad Street was dismantled to reuse its stone, but one bastion survives behind number 6.[9]
Blue plaque commemorating Cecil Jackson-Cole outside the first Oxfam shop
Boswells, the largest independent department store in Oxford, was established in 1738, and traded at the same location on the south side of Broad Street opposite Balliol College until its closure in 2020. Thornton's Bookshop, also on the south side of the street at number 11, was founded by Joseph Thornton (1808–91) in 1835 and closed at the end of 2002.
Broad Street, c. 1900
The pioneer photographer Henry Taunt (1842–1922) had a shop and studio at 9–10 Broad Street, moving here from Cornmarket Street in 1874. He also established a picture-framing business in Boxall's Yard, behind the premises. The lease expired in 1894 and he was forced to file for bankruptcy.[11]
Blackwell's bookshop, on the north side of the street, was founded by Benjamin Henry Blackwell, the son of the first city librarian, in 1879. The shop was initially only 12 feet square, but quickly grew to include space upstairs, in the cellar, and neighbouring shops.[12] It is now Oxford's leading bookshop, with other specialist branches elsewhere in Broad Street and Oxford.