The Marlborough

For years this was our local pub and it had a long tradition of a music night on a Wednesday night which, during the nineties, turned into a jazz jam on a Wednesday night. The small front room would be bursting with musicians, all wanting to play or sing. In such a small venue I always felt very self conscious about my singing, but knew that if I could get up and sing in front of a small crowd, I could do it anywhere. The few times I sang in front a large audience, in a theatre style venue, I found it so much easier, singing out into the dark, into a sea of indistinguishable faces.

Sadly the pub made no money and finally folded several years ago and had remained boarded up until a few months ago. Now the building is being restored and converted into accommodation of some sort. It is an historic building as it was one of Oxford's first railways stations.

The history of the railway in Oxford is interesting: when the extension of the Great Western Railway to Oxford was first proposed in 1836 - 1837, there was great debate over whether the railway would threaten or benefit the economic structure of the city. The concern was really over the impact of easy access to London markets, which at that time were only accessible by river or coach. Would money be spent in London rather than Oxford or would trade in Oxford be improved? There was no real desire to alter the structure of Oxford's economy and Oxford was noticeably untouched by the industrial revolution.

The revolution in Oxford came with the development of the motor industry in the 1920s which turned Oxford into a major industrial city.