COWLEY's car building heritage will be celebrated with the reopening of the founder's home to the public for this year.

A parade of Cowley-built cars will be driven from the Oxford Mini Plant to Nuffield Place next week – the final home of William Morris, later Lord Nuffield – who started off motor manufacturing the city in 1913.

The line-up of classic vehicles, which will include Minis, Maestros and Montegos, will take the 17-mile trip to Nuffield Pace, near Henley on Monday.

The procession will also mark 104 years of car building in Oxford.

Classic car enthusiast Tanya Field said the event was now an important and established date in the Cowley heritage calendar since she first organised the trip in 2013 when the plant celebrated its centenary.

Led by a 1955 Morris Oxford, between 10 and 14 cars will take the route round the ring road to Heyford Hill, then off towards Henley and into the village of Nuffield from 10am.

Former Cowley apprentice Mrs Field said the convoy was important to keep the link between Lord Nuffield and the modern day factory in Cowley.

She added: "It's really nice to keep that link between Lord Nuffield's house and Cowley.

"I think it is a really good important heritage event.

"It's great fun, but it also does have a historical significance."

Mrs Field also said the trip would highlight the successes of the modern day BMW-owned plant – which produces 1,000 Minis off its production line every day.

Nuffield Place closes to the public in the winter, but is reopened every spring by its owners the National Trust.

The cars in the convoy will park throughout the day in the grounds of the estate, which has been preserved to appear as it would have done in the time when Lord Nuffield lived there.

Mrs Field, of Headington Quarry, has the origins of Cowley car manufacturing in her blood, due to her great-grandfather the 7th Earl of Macclesfield being Lord Nuffield's financial backer in 1912 with an investment of £4,000.

It led to the first Morris Oxford – known as the Bullnose because of the distinctive shape of its radiator – rolling off, or more accurately being pushed off, the assembly line in March 1913.

From that day the city earned a reputation as one of Britain's major industrial centres with the plant at one point employing 28,000 workers.

Lord Nuffield died aged 85 in 1963 and left his home, Nuffield Place, to Nuffield College at the University of Oxford.