Thank you to David Brown for sending in a photograph of the statue on the side wall of Austin Reed’s on the corner of Cornmarket and St Michael’s Street (April 23).
But may I suggest that the statue is not of our patron saint St George but is in fact St Michael the Archangel, complete with big angel wings now painted black.
Like St George, the Archangel Michael also slew a dragon to represent God’s victory over the Devil and all that is evil in the world (Revelations 12, v. 7-9), an act which the statue on the Austin Reed’s wall is about to complete.
St Michael’s Street is named after the nearby church of St Michael at the Northgate, whose patron saint is of course the Archangel St Michael.
I wonder if any of your readers know when and for what purpose this statue of St Michael on St Michael’s Street was added to the street scene of Oxford?
RICHARD SAMUELSON
South Street
Middle Barton
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