1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Urban authorities had for centuries attempted to regulate the paving, lighting, and cleansing of their streets, and to remove nuisances, but their efforts were generally frustrated by limited powers and revenues. These challenges became more daunting as the population of towns increased and streets became more congested. By the eighteenth century, there was growing pressure to improve towns for both practical and aesthetic reasons. Some of the impetus for change came from the burgeoning ranks of the urban middle class which included professional people and the landless gentry as well as prosperous shopkeepers, business men and specialist craftsmen. Such individuals might value improvement for personal convenience, and some also because it might lead to increased trade. Many were influenced by the contemporary spread of neo-classicism which favoured order, symmetry, regularity and balance in urban design, and disparaged ‘irregular streets with houses with crooked vistas, and a miscellany of styles’.4 The growth of road traffic encouraged by turnpike roads meant that historic town gates, street markets and encroaching buildings were now perceived as obstacles.5 In many respects, Oxford followed the same trajectory as other English towns and cities, but the presence of the university made it unlike anywhere else except Cambridge. The university was the pre-eminent local government body, and the transformation of substantial parts of the city by the university and colleges had been occurring for centuries. By the eighteenth century, the existence of a large body of educated academics, some of them with metropolitan contacts, also meant that Oxford possessed a higher than usual proportion of residents who had fully imbibed new ideas about urban development and were keen to modernise the city.

Following the St Scholastica's Day riots in 1355, the university had wrested control of the streets and markets from the town and it possessed a wide range of powers that were generally the preserve of a chartered borough.6 The university appointed annually Masters of the Streets who, according to the University Statutes in 1636, were required