THE latest batch of award-winning buildings dating back 40 years can now be revealed.

Each year Oxford Preservation 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.

This week we chart the best winners from 1985 to 1992 – through which the city’s building trade and property market fought off a recession to produce some outstanding builds.

The renovation of Mansfield College’s impressive main buildings designed by Victorian architect Basil Champneys persuaded the judges in 1985.

Oxford Crown Court and its imposing facade was the former Morris Garage before its transformation in the mid-1980s and also caught the OPT’s eye.

Another project which has stood the test of time – the Saxon Tower at St Michael at the North Gate – won the following year.

The original medieval facade and interior of 26-27 Cornmarket and the former Zacaharias shop can also be enjoyed today – in the form of Pret A Manger – and was one of 1988’s winners.

That same year the old Golden Cross coaching inn and its transformation to the existing shopping arcade leading to Covered Market was also recognised by the judges.

But 1989 – according to OPT records – produced a standard of entries that ‘did not live up to their predecessors’.

Holy Trinity House in Turn Again Lane won in 1990 and Somerville’s Margaret Thatcher Centre was successful in 1991.

The Old Parsonage’s revamp won in 1992.

The OPT awards take place in November.