THE city's finest new buildings and restoration projects over the past 40 years will be celebrated over the next month ahead of the Oxford Preservation Trust awards.

Over the next five weeks Oxford Mail will be featuring some of the previous winners of the awards as it turns 40.

Each year the Trust has handed out awards in a variety of categories recognising new buildings, conservation projects and environmental schemes.

The awards were launched in 1977 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Trust, which has undertaken its own restoration projects including the Oxford Castle Quarter, as well as guided and recognised others.

The Trust's director Debbie Dance said: "When we thought about the amazing projects over the 40 years we realised it was capturing the changes that have been made in the city.

"It's all down to the people on the ground who have instigated these changes and we wanted to recognise them for the anniversary.

"We are interested to see whether readers agree with the selections and what people's favourites are now."

The first award winner was the central garden in Oxford’s historic Park Town residential area.

Its iron railings and lanterns were restored by The Friends of Park Town and were honoured by OPT shortly after the project’s completion in 1977.

Other winners from the early years include the former Morris Garage in Longwall Street which had its facade cleaned and repaired to win in 1984, and the conversion of the old warehouse at Folly Bridge into The Head of the River pub.

Perhaps the most extraordinary change is the Old Gasworks site which was transformed into a large open space around Grandpont, which include a nature park.

It beat 31 other entries to the prize in 1982, which OPT said was a particularly strong year for projects in the county.

The former The City of Oxford High School for Boys in George Street is another building which visitors and residents will pass daily – currently Oxford University’s history faculty – and that took the award in 1979.

Finally the restoration of the 18th-century cartouche in Paradise Street won in 1980, and the Trust said it ‘saved a notable part of Oxford’s townscape in a very fragile area’, while Helen House won in 1983.

Once all the winners are featured, readers will be able to vote for their favourites, with a prize of two tickets to the OPT awards in November up for grabs.