Oxford house

Our family lived in Oxford for a year when Jonathan was three years old. Jonathan doesn't have many memories of that time, but Tim and I do. More importantly, I still collaborate with the professor I worked with during that year. Since I would be traveling all the way to the UK, I arranged to stay an extra two weeks in Oxford to work on new projects with him. And because those two weeks overlapped with school holidays in Melbourne, I arranged to take the entire family again. I rented a little English row house for the two weeks. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, three people.

The house I rented ended up being very lovely, with a lot of character. It was built in the 1890s for canal workers and their families; a canal runs parallel to the back gardens of the houses on the other side of the street. The houses have mostly been updated since the time they were built. For example, they now have indoor plumbing. However, I think our carpet may have been original to the 1890s.

Aside from the carpet, it was a lovely little house.

This is what it looked like on the outside: We're one of those many houses in a row behind the cars.

Inside the master bedroom looked like this:

There was a cute little garden out the back. It was well-maintained and very lovely with autumn flowers. The shoes on the table in the garden were decorative, I think. They were there when we arrived, and we didn't touch them. Maybe we could have used them to stomp around in the mud in the garden, but we didn't actually go into the garden much. 

The kitchen was a long galley, with the dining area at the end. These were both added on since the 1890s, at the back of the house.

Living room. We didn't use the wood burning stove. We did turn on the TV a couple of times, though.

Front room, where Tim made his office for a week and a bit.

Bathroom, also updated since the 1890s. There was a shower in addition to the tub in the opposite corner. Luckily for the three of us trying to get clean in the mornings.

Smaller bedroom, where Jonathan stayed. 

The location was great. We could walk 20 minutes along the canal to the train station, or 15 minutes down the road to my colleague's office. Fifteen minutes in another direction took us to shops for groceries, and a five minute walk put us on a main road with many bus lines.

It was a lovely place to stay.