On the opposite side of Cornmarket is the more historic Golden Cross shopping arcade, located in the medieval courtyard of one of the coaching inns of Oxford, leading to the Covered Market.

[3] Formerly on this site was the Clarendon Hotel on Cornmarket Street, which grew from two former coaching inns, the King's Head and the Star.

[…] If only we had known a few years ago what we now know about the Clarendon, we could have put forward a much better case and a much better scheme for at least its partial preservation and adaptation.The dig also revealed wares dating back to Saxon Britain, including eleventh-century pottery and a thirteenth-century aquamanile.

The branch was five times larger than its predecessor[4]—indeed, when it opened, it was the biggest in Europe[12]—and contained a deluxe cafeteria, offices, a roof garden and a multi-storey car park.

[17] In January 1984, one person was killed and another seriously injured when a collapse occurred at the Queen Street demolition site for the centre.

[19] In 1998, as the first step of a renovation of the centre, the Littlewoods store gave up 930 square metres (10,000 sq ft) of space adjacent to Cornmarket Street, to create space for a new store;[20] this was later filled by Gap, after the landlord, Gartmore Group, wanting to make the centre more fashion-focused, rejected a larger bid from the electronics retailer Comet.

[21] Following the £5m renovation (which also involved new lighting and doors, and redecoration), the centre (now described as having 14,000 square metres (150,000 sq ft) of retail space) was sold to an investment partnership in July 2000, for £80m.

[22] The centre's layout was slightly modified in 2001, when the former Etam and Halfords units were merged to accommodate a relocated and enlarged Dixons store.

[24] In 2012, a plan was put forward to extend the centre floorspace by 10%: replacing the section near Shoe Lane with a three-storey extension, to house H&M.

[25] Prior to construction of the extension, archaeologists carried out an excavation beneath the site to discover remains of occupation from the 17th century and earlier.