DEMOLITION work on the former Halfords building to make way for a new Waitrose store continued yesterday.

An excavator was captured by our photographer hauling down the structure, which is to be replaced by the new supermarket next year.

The building, used by Cancer Research UK from August 2013 to June this year, is due to come down by the end of the year with Waitrose expected to open by Autumn 2015.

Half of the building was vacated by MFI in 2008 and with the rest becoming empty last year when Halfords switched to Meadowside Retail Park.

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Proposals for the 24,500 sq ft store were approved by Oxford City Council’s west area planning committee in May. It will be the city’s second Waitrose, after Headington, and will have 150 parking spaces and create 160 new jobs.

Oxford Mail:

Oxford Mail:

From top, an ice rink in the Botley Road opened in 1930. Due to low attendances and high running costs it was converted into a cinema in the summer of 1933. The former ice rink building which had been used by Frank Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade since the late 1940s. This picture was taken in 1967

Planning permission was granted on condition a pedestrian crossing was paid for by Waitrose.

The site used to be an ice rink in the 1930s before being converted to a cinema.

From the late 1940s it was used for production of Frank Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade.

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