The above postcard shows a group outside Alf & Amelia Cooper’s cottage in the hamlet of Barton (now part of Barton Village Road) . Behind them is the Princes Castle pub, and then Barton Manor. According to The Changing Faces of Headington, Book 1, the women in this photograph are Maude Smith, Mrs W. Morris with her daughter Ena, and Mrs Alf Cooper. The 1901 census shows that the mason's labourer Alfred Cooper (46) living in this house immediately below the Prince's Castle with his wife Amelia (39) and their children Alfred junior (7) and Ernest (4). Ena Victoria Morris was born in Barton on 26 February 1907, which means that this image dates from about 1908. Her paents were the labourer William Morris and his wife Annie, and in 1921 Ena (15) was a housemaid living at the Dragon School in Bardwell Road.

The above postcard shows a slightly different view of the same scene in the 1920s.

Left: The above view in 2012

See The Barton Estate

At this time this part of the present Barton estate was a hamlet of Old Headington, in the parish of St Andrew’s Church. Before the northern bypass was built in 1935, Barton Road led straight into the hamlet.

The Northern Bypass between the present Headington to Banbury Road roundabouts (unemployment relief work) was completed in 1935, and since then Barton has been cut off from the rest of Old Headington.

From 1937 a large council estate was built around Barton Village Road and on land to the east of Bayswater Road.

Above: Barton village road from the south in the 1950s