Walk south. Dancin all day, it's leaving the city behind you.
Past Christchurch and towards the River Thames before you reach Folley Bridge, you'll see on your right a grand Ashley building.
High up on the facade is a plaque.
It features the upper body and head of a man, his arm resting casually along the top of a tablet which reads William Morris Viscount Nuffield,
1877 to 1963, motor manufacturer and generous benefactor.
I think that that short poetic phrase sums up very neatly a man who did more
than any other individual to transform Oxford in the 20th century physically,
economically and socially. My name's Liz Wooley.
I was a student here in the 1980s, but I stayed on afterwards and crossed the great divide to become a townie.
Now, I'm a freelance local historian working on commercial research,
community history projects and as a part time tutor at the university's Department for Continuing Education.
My main interest is in the city of Oxford in the 19th and early to mid 20th centuries, and in particular in social history, industry and commerce.
And that's why the subject of this plaque. William Morris or Lord Nuffield, as he became in 1934, is so appealing to me.
And like many other people, I also have reason to thank him.
I was born in the maternity wing of the Radcliffe Infirmary, which he built in 1932,
so that, as he put it, any woman in Oxford can have her baby in hospital.
This building here is now the county court.
But the plaque is here because originally it was one of several motor garages which Morris had around the city.
By the time the building was erected in 1932,
William Morris was well on his way to becoming one of the most successful businessman that this country had ever seen.
And someone who put Oxford firmly on the international map, he'd started at the age of 15 with a capital of just four pounds,
setting up a bicycle repair business in a shed at the back of his parents house.
Soon he was building bicycle's and selling them. His business expanded.
And by 1981, when he was 24, he took over premises in the city centre.
By 1912, he was assembling cars. And he soon moved his factory to Cowley, a village two and a half miles to the southeast of the city within 15 years.
He was making 55000 cars a year. Two fifths of all the cars being produced in Britain.
And on the eve of the Second World War, he was employing 11000 people, 30 percent of expats working population.
A lot of those workers came from outside the city. Thousands of men migrated here from depressed mining areas in South Wales,
Yorkshire and Derbyshire, where Morris actively advertised for their labour.
Their wives and children followed a large new housing. Estates were built, particularly between East Oxford and Cowley, to accommodate them.
These men and their families brought with them their religious nonconformity. They left wing politics and trade unionism and their culture.
That's why we still have an Oxford Welsh male voice choir.
Even to this day.
So within just a few decades, William Morris changed the demographics, the physical layout and the social and religious life of the city.
He also made Oxford World famous not just as the home of a university,
but as a manufacturing centre from which cars were exported all over the globe to meet demand.
He set up foreign assembly plants in South Africa, India and Australia.
The Hindustan ambassador, based on the Morris Oxford, was still being manufactured in India as late as 2014.
And such was the fame of the Morris Carr works here in Oxford.
The tourists flocked to visit the factory, and some academics noted ruefully that the university had become little more than Cowley's Latin Quarter.
At the same time, Morris amassed a fortune at one time, he was said to be earning 2000 pounds a day.
But he gave most of it away. And he lived frugally. When asked about the benefits of riches, he said, well, you can only wear one suit at a time.
He gave enormous donations to higher education, to scientific research and to medicine, both here in Oxford and elsewhere.
He gave regular and large benefactions to various hospitals.
He provided numerous medical research scholarships at colleges and endow the Nuffield Dominions scholarships,
bringing medical graduates from universities in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa to further their education at Oxford.
Though when asked why he didn't include Canada, he replied, Well, they haven't bought any of my calls.
This former Maurice Scarrow Johnson Allday,
it is just one of many sites across the city which remind us of the lasting impact which Lord Nuffield had both on the town and the gown,
though perhaps surprisingly, the plaque here is the only personalised memorial to him in the city which he loved so well and to which he gave so much.
I hope that you've enjoyed this podcast.
Please visit the Oxford and Empire Network Web site to listen to others and to find out more about Oxford's relationship with Empire.