Oxford City councillors once considered moving all their operations to Headington Hill Hall.

The idea was considered in 1958 when city affairs were being run from twelve separate buildings.

Had the move gone ahead, it could have broken a link with the present site of the town hall in St Aldate’s, which could be traced back 730 years.

It was on February 18, 1229 that the burgesses bought a house to act as their ‘Gild Hall’ for town officials. They paid King Henry III £100 for the house that once belonged to ‘David the Jew’.

The house probably became Crown property as part of death duties, which were high for Jews in those days.

The St Aldate’s site was redeveloped in 1750 and extensions were added at various times before the present town hall was completed in 1897 at a cost of £95,000.

With a population of less than 50,000, the city could house all council departments, as well as the courts and the police, comfortably in the building.

But the start of the car industry under William Morris, later Lord Nuffield, increased the population substantially, putting pressure on council services and the staff who provided them.

The town hall became too small to house all 727 council employees, with the result that by 1958, they were scattered in twelve offices across the city centre, hardly a recipe for efficiency. The cost of renting offices outside the town hall was put at £35,000 a year.

The suggestion that the council should look for a suitable site to house all council employees was made by the chairman of the city estates committee, councillor Edmund Gibbs.

The planning committee came up with the idea of Headington Hill Hall, at the top of Headington Hill. The hall, formerly the home of the Morrell brewery family, had been used during and after the war as a rehabilitation centre for wounded servicemen, but was then empty.

The council bought the hall, but did not pursue the idea of turning it into council offices. Instead, it leased it to the later-to-be-disgraced publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, who lived there with his family and set up his Pergamon Press headquarters on the site.

Maxwell famously described it as “the best council house in the country”. It is now part of Oxford Brookes University.