A CITY centre cafe that bankrolls good student deeds is bidding to expand into an old bank building. Turl Street Kitchen wants to open a takeaway food and drink service in a former Barclays opposite its current premises. A planning application
YOUNG people will talk about how they have been involved in planning arts activities at a special seminar at Pegasus Theatre. The theatre, in Magdalen Road, East Oxford, will bring up to 50 delegates from across Oxfordshire on Monday, June 17,
A KNIFE-weilding masked raider threatened a female shop assistant before making off with cash during a terrifying robbery. Thames Valley Police is appealing for witnesses following the incident in Littlemore, near Oxford, on Thursday. At around
Motorists were caught in traffic following a collision between a car and a lorry this afternoon. Police were called to the crash at 4.30pm on the A40 eastbound at Cassington between Eynsham Road and A44 Woodstock Road. There were no injuries
HE suffers from seasickness, and only took up rowing in winter. But Steve Paterson is about to take part in a gruelling 2,000- mile boat race. Tomorrow the 28-year-old from Oxford will set off as part of GB Row 2013, which aims to loop the
THE latest winner of the Oxford Mail Loyalty Card prize draw will spend her £200 prize on an operation to get her dancing again. Aerobics instructor Jane Green, from Sandhills, Headington, recently ended up in A and E after going a stretch to far
VOLUNTEERS taking part in the Oxfordshire Reading Campaign have been getting some top tips on how to choose books for children. There are currently about 90 volunteers reading one- to-one to seven year olds in schools across Oxfordshire as part
GRAB Monday's edition of the Oxford Mail for a chance to be one of five readers to win £100 to spend at Argos. We're offering the prize as part of Heinz' launch of its new chilled savoury pasty slices. Get Monday's paper for details on how
BRADLEY Smith will race in this weekend's MotoGP at Mugello despite needing an operation following a crash in practice this afternoon. The Oxfordshire rider will require a skin graft next week after his left arm was briefly trapped under his Yamaha
YOUNG people from OYAP Trust’s youth action team, called Youth of Bicester, YoBs, exhibited a host of work at a three-day exhibition at Bicester’s Eco Demonstration Building, in Garth Park, from May 18 to 20. Their work included drawings, fashion
A VILLAGE opened its doors for Artweeks with the hope of uncovering the next Leonardo da Vinci or David Hockney. Residents in North Aston created a community exhibition with 66 items on display, including paintings, photographs and a metal construction
ARTISTS across the county are cleaning their brushes after displaying their artwork as part of the 32nd Artweeks festival. Launched on May 4 in Oxford, the event has seen more than 500 exhibitions with painters, sculptors and many more opening
FOUR years ago Quin Coetzer took part in a summer school to learn the basics of stained glass. He loved the course so much the customer services manager set about teaching himself the skills of the craft and created a series of work including garden
ABSTRACT shapes, carvings and bronze statues were dotted around a Bicester studio as it opened its doors for the only time this year. About 20 members of Bicester Sculpture Group exhibited their work at the George Muller Studio, at the Old Vicarage
FORTY years ago Clifford Reeves’ art teacher told him he had no real talent and should find another line of work. But this month, at the age of 54, Mr Reeves unveiled a host of watercolours at St James’ Church, in Somerton, near Bicester, that
ARTIST Jan Harvey was inspired by the area she lives in for her latest exhibition. The Shipton-under-Wychwood 51-year-old used watercolours, acrylics and photography to portray the beauty of the Evenlode Valley in her exhibition The Outstanding
Some vehicles deliver precisely what they say on the tin. Nissan’s X-Trail looks like a meaty machine capable of mastering tough terrain and easily towing loads topping two tonnes. That’s because it is. It is that down-to-earth, go-anywhere
PLANS to build 120 homes on Harwell Campus were given unanimous approval by local councillors. Harwell Science and Innovation Campus applied for the permission with the help of property consultants Kemp and Kemp. The six-hectare plot of land
SHOPPERS will soon be able to pick broad beans, courgettes and rhubarb from planters around Witney town centre. Witney Town Council has teamed up with local groups and charities to fill what used to be flower beds and hanging baskets with edible
RESIDENTS have praised plans for a 380-home estate in Faringdon. Bloor Homes, which is still in the process of building its 428-home Folly Park estate north of Park Road, now wants to build on land to the south. The estate would include land
A COUNCIL has agreed a multi-million pound price to buy surplus MoD land that could become the country’s largest self-build project. Cherwell District Council looks set to become the new owner and developer of Bicester’s Graven Hill, which was
BAKERS are being encouraged to whip up their best cupcakes and Victoria sponges as this year’s Oxfordshire Bake Off kicks off. The final details of the contest have now been confirmed, with entries opening on Saturday, June 15. More than £1,100
LONDON Welsh have announced eight new signings as they prepare for life back in the Championship. They include utility back Tom May, who has two caps for England and joins after two seasons at Northampton Saints. Another with international
PUB firm JD Wetherspoons is opening in Abingdon this October, creating about 40 jobs in the town. It was given permission to convert the old Post Office at 25 High Street in July last year by the Vale of White Horse District Council. But the
THE first carnival in Wantage for 25 years is set to be held this weekend. Entertainment at Ray’s Carnival on Sunday will include bouncy castles and other inflatable fun, a petting zoo, live music and a range of food stalls. The fun kicks off
TENNIS players in South Oxford are set to benefit from a £10,000 revamp of a park’s courts. The courts at Hinksey Park in Abingdon Road have been resurfaced, painted with non-slip paint and new nets have also being provided. Cash from Oxford
Agave is the new miracle food. The nectar is a natural way to sweeten anything from cakes to tea. Health food stores sell it. Trendy juice bars add it to their smoothies. You can hardly read a recipe without Agave being the “unique” ingredient.
BEER enthusiasts will have a chance to try out dozens of ales as they watch competitors in the World Aunt Sally Singles Championships. The Charlbury Beer Festival attracts about 3,000 people and this year’s event, from noon on June 29, will feature
DURING the course of his football career, Darren Brett grew a small team into one which was thousands of players strong. Now the former right-back is hoping to bring the same sort of success to an Oxford pub. The 40-year-old has taken over
ORGANISERS of a festival of new music centred on Oxford’s Cowley Road, have unveiled the first tranche of bands for the event. Gathering Festival will see up to 40 bands playing seven East Oxford venues in just one night, on October 19. Artists
THREE STARS This is a funny and sometimes touching show about a young Punjabi in Britain who wants to follow his dream of becoming a dancer, in the face of enormous pressure from his mother to look for a safer, more ‘respectable’ career.
FOUR STARS An opening chorus of three (one man, two ladies), an orchestra of two (a piano and a flute), a female Nanki-Poo - it sounds like the recipe for disaster. But Opera Anywhere is a company that could stage the telephone
LONDON Welsh are more likely to remain in Oxford next season than return to the capital. The Exiles say more fans support them staying put than going back to Old Deer Park, Richmond – but the club have yet to confirm plans for 2013-14. Welsh
LONDON Welsh could face further punishment for the Tyson Keats registration fiasco, writes Ed Mezzetti. The Exiles were handed a five-point penalty and a £15,000 fine by the RFU in March and a further suspended five-point penalty was later removed
Thames Water was unable to fully re-open a main city centre street yesterday on time following a leak from a water main. The company had hoped to reopen St Aldate’s opposite Oxford Crown Court yesterday morning, but there was a delay in getting
A SPECIAL school has been plunged into special measures just two years after it opened. In a damning Ofsted report, inspectors criticised everything from teaching to leadership and behaviour at Parklands Campus (Action for Children) in Bessels
A RECORD-breaking total of £87,000 has now been raised for the Oxford Children’s Hospital from this year’s OX5 charity run. By April, £70,000 had been handed over, with an extra £17,000 added to the total this week. The run for the Headington
SOUTH Oxfordshire Amateurs, the county’s premier wandering club, broke new ground with a double-header against Radley College. It’s the first time in the SOA’s 80-year history that they have played two games on the same day. In the top match
A Facebook page that urged students to rate their sexual partners has been deleted after national uproar. Oxford Brookes was among other UK universities which had pages set up on the social media site encouraging users to score their lovers out
Bernard Tollett Oxfordshire Cup BANBURY will visit Cropredy in the second round on Tuesday, June 11, after originally being drawn away to Didcot. Oxford & Bletchingdon Nondescripts, who were paired with Cropredy, will now travel south to
THE search is on to find neighbours in an Oxford street to sign up to an electric car scheme. Ten city residents will be chosen to take part in an 18-month trial where they will be loaned a Nissan Leaf car and provided with a charging point at
The Cricketer Village Cup ENGLAND Under 19 Test player Miles Hammond is included in the Aston Rowant side to visit Tiddington in Sunday’s Oxfordshire semi-finals. All-rounder Hammond only joined Rowant this season, but is eligible to play as
PLANS to make Oxford the electric car centre of Europe have stalled. A year ago the city was heralded as paving the way for the future of motoring. Transport Minister Norman Baker unveiled measures to boost use of low-carbon vehicles by creating
A GOVERNMENT grant of £5m has been awarded to unblock an infamous pinch point on the A34. The Department for Transport has put forward £5m of the £9.2m the Local Enterprise Partnership needs for a “hamburger roundabout” at the Milton Interchange
REMOVING buses from Queen Street due to the new Westgate development is a long overdue opportunity that Oxfordshire County Council must seize with both hands. Where to put them in our hemmed-in historic streets without causing further traffic snarl-ups
Oxford RL head coach Tony Benson has urged his players to tighten up their defence for their Kingstone Press Championship One clash with Gateshead at Iffley Road on Sunday (3). Last week Oxford lost 40-34 at London Skolars and Benson says they
NEWS that the Westgate’s £400m redevelopment should pave the way for the long awaited-pedestrianisation of Queen Street has been welcomed. The removal of buses from the busy shopping street is among transport changes being lined up in advance of
A CAR dealership has been sold to a major rival. The Land Rover franchise on Faringdon Road, Cumnor Hill, has been bought by the Ridgeway Group from Hartwell for an undisclosed sum with all 33 staff transferring to the new owner. Ridgeway chief
Serious Cricket Home Counties Premier League FORMER Durham 2nd and Buckinghamshire batsman Ricky Hopwood makes his Aston Rowant debut at home to Falkland in Division 2 West tomorrow. The opener comes in for seamer Will Rooney as Rowant look
EVERYONE was against the Castle Mill development at Port Meadow, which ruins the views. All residents and businesses were against the building of student flats on St Clement’s car park, which means the loss of a valuable public facility. Nobody
I FIND it reassuring that when I drive around various areas in Oxford that there is definitely ‘one rule’ for homeowners and ‘one rule’ for rental homes. What I’m implying is that when I put my bins out for collection and retrieve them once emptied
IF there’s anyone more intense than a teenage daughter determined to right the world’s wrongs and defeat exploitation at a stroke, I have yet to meet her. Such young ladies can be terrifying. Misplaced vanity had led me to the summer clothes section
SATURDAY CRICKET SERIOUS CRICKET HOME COUNTIES PREMIER LEAGUE Div 1: Banbury v Potters Bar. Div 2 West: Aston Rowant v Falkland, Cove v Great & Little Tew, Oxford v Reading. CHERWELL LEAGUE Div 1: Horspath v Twyford, Leighton
Malcolm Rose celebrated his 40th birthday by smashing the long-standing Oxonian club 30-mile time trial record by almost two minutes. Conditions were ideal as Rose clocked 1hr 4mins 39secs to gain third place overall in the Hertfordshire Wheelers
Chipping Norton Rugby Club’s Andy Dawson was named coach of the year at the West Oxfordshire Sports annual awards night at Witney Lakes Resort. A total of 21 individual awards were handed out to local athletes by Cllr Richard Langridge and Peter
Serious Cricket Home Counties Premier League OXFORDSHIRE pair Lloyd Sabin and Ashley Blanchard return for Banbury’s home clash with Potters Bar in Division 1. Opening batsman Sabin has recovered from a toe problem, while seamer Blanchard is
With the rebuilding of the Clarendon Shopping Centre coming on apace, and Hansons being the contractor delivering concrete along New Inn Hall Street on UK National Cycle Route 57, now is the time for a critical reminder to all cyclists, especially
IT HAS been suggested that it is no great loss if Oxford University’s oversized blocks of graduate flats obscure the view from Port Meadow of the tower of St Barnabas Church in Jericho. But its tower, Italianate in contrast to Gothic, makes a distinctive
“THIS is what muggers did to my face” reads the headline (May 23). Then we learn that a pitifully low 21 per cent of city robbers last year “received a caution, charge or conviction”. Rob Jennings qualifies one of his assailants as “of Asian
A forgotten aspect of the Roger Dudman development is it has closed the useful cycle path that led from west of the railway station to Port Meadow, Walton Well Road and North Oxford. Cyclists who used this route now must brave the dangerous roads
I WRITE in response to a letter from W K Leonard titled ‘Place tolls on cyclists’ regarding proposed changes to The Plain (Viewpoints, May 17). He claims that cycling is a privilege. This is not the case. Everyone in this country has the right
The Isis was packed for the Oxford University Summer Eights, in which Pembroke’s men were stroked to victory by a woman with three Oly-mpic medals to her name. Caryn Davies, who led to US women's eight to victory at both the Beijing and London
OXFORD’S civic roles and links with a twin town will be celebrated this weekend. Tomorrow and Sunday, new Lord Mayor Dee Sinclair’s official celebrations will take place across the city. Every year, the Lord Mayor of Oxford hosts a series of
PLANS on how to fix a huge crack which appeared in an Oxfordshire road nearly six months ago should be agreed next month. Following a routine inspection on December 19, a landslide was discovered in Oxford Road on the A4183 between Hinksey Hill
A 17-year-old suffered facial injuries and concussion after being robbed. The victim was walking along a cycle path near Blackbird Leys Road when he was attacked by three youths at about 10.30am on Tuesday. The attackers, who stole the victim
OXFORD Pride festivities will kick off with a celebration of the iconic rainbow flag. The annual event, which this year will take the form of a 10-day arts and culture festival, will be launched tonight with parties at the Jam Factory and The Plush
Protesters will be in Bonn Square tomorrow to protest against the so-called bedroom tax. The Government policy will mean housing benefit will be reduced for council and housing association tenants who ministers think have more bedrooms than they
POLICE have released an e-fit image of a man wanted for attempting to abduct a small boy. The man approached the boy as he was playing outside in Overbrook Gardens, Blackbird Leys, on Saturday at 11.45am. The boy’s mother heard them talking
YOUR wedding is supposed to be the happiest day of your life, but this would-be groom was led away from his ceremony in handcuffs. UK Border Agency officers broke up a suspected sham wedding at Oxford’s Tidmarsh Lane register office and now the
AN Oxford don questioning the importance of spelling and grammar was last night accused of undermining the fight to improve children’s failing literacy standards. Prof Simon Horobin, a Magdalen College English don, has questioned the need to rigorously
WE are almost certainly tempting fate in case there are errors in today’s edition, but we could not disagree more with Professor Simon Horobin’s statement that standards for spelling and grammar should be relaxed. Yes, spellings have changed over
FIGHTING with his friend in Oxford city centre has left a man facing a community order and 50 hours of unpaid work. Christopher Owens, of Lodden Avenue, Berinsfield, admitted using threatening, insulting or abusive words or behaviour to cause harassment
LAST year Kym Jones and her team were creating landscapes for the Olympic village, now they have scooped an award at the Chelsea Flower Show. Staff at Applied Landscape Design in Chesterton near Bicester have been celebrating after winning a silver
A CHRISTIAN conference on human trafficking is set to take place in Oxford in the wake of the Bullfinch sex abuse trial. The day-long event is being organised by Oxford Community Against Trafficking (Oxcat), an organisation representing various
MEMBERS of the Royal Air Forces Association (RAFA) in Witney, which looked set to close after 70 years in the town, have decided to continue for another year. Earlier this month, the RAFA branch announced plans to wind down due to dwindling numbers
A PRIMARY school is urging motorists to slow down after one was caught speeding past at 65mph. Main Street in Clanfield is a 30mph zone but police stopped 23 drivers for breaking the speed limit outside the school during a two-hour operation.
ONE lane is closed while emergency repairs are carried out following the collapse of a manhole on the A4142 Eastern Bypass Southbound at Horspath Road. Lane three is closed towards Cowley.
TRAFFIC has returned to normal on the A34 Western Bypass this morning following an earlier broken down lorry. The vehicle was just before the A420 Botley Interchange and lane one of two was partially blocked.
