Broad Street, Oxford

[5] The street developed alongside the town ditch (known as Canditch) in front of the city wall, which was built in AD 911.

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] On Broad Street, the Protestant Oxford Martyrs, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley (16 October 1555), and later Thomas Cranmer (21 March 1556), were burnt at the stake just outside the city wall.

Nearby in St Giles', the events are commemorated with a Gothic Revival stone monument, the Martyrs' Memorial.

[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.

[10] 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.

During 1894–1923, the Holywell Press had its premises and bookshop at 29 Broad Street in the former Chapel of St Mary at Smith Gate.

[13] In 1923, the building became part of Hertford College and is now formally at the northern end of the adjoining Catte Street.

Historical view of Broad Street looking east towards (left to right) the Clarendon Building , and the Sheldonian Theatre and the Old Ashmolean Building .
The eastern part of Broad Street, with the Weston Library on the left and Clarendon Building on the right. The building ahead is the former Indian Institute in Catte Street .
Pillar outside the Clarendon building at the junction of Broad Street and Catte Street
The cross of granite setts marking the location of the martyrs' execution at the western end of Broad Street.
Blue plaque commemorating Cecil Jackson-Cole outside the first Oxfam shop
Broad Street, c. 1900