Botley Road

The Botley Road is an important bus and commuter route to Oxford, and Seacourt Park and Ride is located near the junction with the A34.

[3][4] In December 2022, Network Rail said they were looking at how to reduce the impact of the work on the local community and that they did not need to start the full closure of Botley Road in January 2023.

[8] However, in July 2024, further delays, blamed on the complex layout of utility pipes, meant that the road did not reopen in October.

Thomas Gable, an Oxford publican, laid out Hill View Road in 1895, providing plots for others to develop.

Thomas Gable died later that year and Kingerlee builders bought the unsold plots along the rest of Hill View Road.

Describing his first-ever arrival in Oxford as a young student, he writes: "I sallied out of the railway station on foot to find either a lodging-house or a cheap hotel; all agog for dreaming spires and last enchantments.

"[13] Crime novelist Colin Dexter writes: "Beginning its life under a low (Head Room 12ft) railway bridge, and proceeding its cramped and narrow way for several hundred yards past shabby rows of terraced houses that line the thoroughfare in tight and mean confinement, the Botley Road gradually broadens into a spacious stretch of dual carriageway that carries all west-bound traffic towards Faringdon, Swindon and the sundry hamlets in between.

Here the houses no longer shoulder their neighbours in such grudging proximity, and hither several of the Oxford businessmen have brought their premises.