RESIDENTS of East Oxford turned out to share their memories of Oxford's 'favourite street' as part of a bid to create an online 'Wikipedia' of Cowley Road.

The group behind the new digital encyclopedia cataloguing the history of the 288 buildings which line Cowley Road was at East Oxford Community Centre on Sunday to gather photos, documents and insights from local residents.

The archive, which was launched on July 23, is the creation of East Oxford artist Eleanor Greenhalgh.

Speaking at the open event on Sunday, which saw about 10 people turn up by 4pm, the 29-year old praised the community for coming forward to share their memories.

She said: "We had a lot of people who came who had memories of Cowley Road, including people who used to live there.

"We are doing this so that local people can record and share their own memories and so that we can create a memory bank which is freely available for the community to use.

"It's a really vibrant community here, people have a real sense of place and you can't help but see people that you know when you're walking down the street."

Asked about the inspiration behind the project she said: "I was just walking down Cowley Road one day and noticed it changes so often it is hard to keep track of what used to be there.

"So I thought: what if you could go back in time and see what was there before?"

The website – cowleyroad.org – is a home for digitised material featuring images, stories and memories from each of the buildings that line the road.

Rather than fill the encyclopedia from history books and council records, Miss Greenhalgh is relying on the memories of people who live and have lived there to fill in the blank spaces themselves.

More than 60 people attended the official launch event at East Oxford Community Centre last month, including several who brought memorabilia to share.

Co-organiser and website programme Charlie Harvey, speaking at Sunday's open event, also hailed the event a success and said that the idea for the personal catalogue of memories on a single road may be a 'UK-first'.

The website is a 'wiki', in the same format and style as online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

In order to become an editor and add content, visitors have to create an account, which takes a few minutes, and then start feeding in their memories.