BUSES, cars, vans and a lorry jockey for space as cyclists and pedestrians carefully weave their way through the throng. This was a typically chaotic scene in Queen Street, Oxford, before the pedestrianisation scheme began.

Two-way traffic was then the norm, with huge queues building up at the Carfax traffic lights in all directions.

A No 82 bus waits patiently in the traffic for the lights to change so it can continue its journey to Aylesbury.

Meanwhile, a No 1 bus, seen just below the clock, heads in the opposite direction towards the railway station.

A van on the left appears to have been parked partly on the pavement, adding to the congestion. Shops seen in the picture include Ballard’s the jewellers, Saxone shoes and Dewhurst butchers on the right and Freeman Hardy and Willis, more shoes, on the left.

When this picture was taken in 1967, looking from Carfax towards what was to become Bonn Square and the Westgate Centre, the January sales were in full swing. Remember them?

Today, shops seem to have never-ending sales, one starting as soon as the last one has finished. But in the 1960s, sales were an important part of the New Year calendar, for both shop owners and shoppers.

Shoppers would look forward to snapping up plenty of bargains, while owners cut prices to get rid of left-over Christmas stock to make room for new goods in spring.

Accompanying the picture in the Oxford Mail was a lengthy article, in which reporters assessed how the sales were going across the county.

The general feeling was that shoppers were spending steadily, surprising traders who feared a lean time during a period of economic uncertainty.

Food, tobacco, sweets and clothes were selling well, but sales of furniture and electrical appliances were sluggish in some stores.

One Oxford shoe shop owner reported selling many more women’s and children’s shoes than men’s.

He told a reporter: “A man won’t let his wife and children go without.

“He’d rather make do himself.”

The Mail, with a little poetic licence perhaps, interpreted that as meaning that “Oxford husbands are walking around with holes in their shoes so that their wives and children can have a new pair”.