This building on the
Woodstock Road is home to the Oxford
University Language Centre but its history
is quite a bit different. It started
out as a purpose built museum designed to
accommodate a large collection of trophies
collected by Charles Victor Alexander
Peel. By 1900 this big game hunting
enthusiast had accumulated so many pelts and
mounted skeletons of the animals he had
hunted that he needed somewhere to store and
display them. Apparently, the large
dormer windows were designed to provide
light into the exhibition space.
Overall the building has an "Arts and
Crafts" style with its brick buttresses and
the prominent porch.
The museum closed in 1918 and the collection
was acquired by the Royal Albert Memorial
Museum in Exeter. A Blue Plaque on the
front of the building tells of another phase
in the building's history.
The Oxford Blue
Plaque Scheme website explains that
after the museum left Oxford, "...
The building was acquired by Alfred
Ballard, auctioneer and a leading
amateur actor with the City of
Oxford Dramatic Club. He intended to
use it for auctions and as an
auditorium. Meanwhile Jane
Ellis, a
young London actress, was determined
that Oxford should have its own
repertory company. She persuaded the
sympathetic Ballard to rent out the
auditorium and approached the
celebrated director J. B.
Fagan, ... to take on the challenge
of the new venture." Their
first production was in 1923 and in
subsequent performances many up and
coming actors took part before going on
to become famous. These included:
John Gielgud, Flora Robson, Tyrone
Guthrie, Robert Donat, and
Margaret Rutherford. However, with
growing competition from the New Theatre
and cinemas, as well as the obvious
limitations of the building, the next
step was the construction of a purpose
built theatre on Beaumont Street as the
company's new home.
Since 1992 the building
has been occupied by the Oxford University
Language Centre.
