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Oxford’s streets and buildings carry many stories. Some are simple; others are layered. Florence Park is one of them.

On the surface, it is a 1930s neighbourhood created for Morris Cowley car factory workers, gifted by Councillor F.E. Moss in memory of his sister Florence (Oxford History).

But the street names reveal more. Campbell, Cornwallis, Clive, Havelock, and Lytton honour men of the East India Company — a private corporation that stripped India of its wealth and became the world’s largest opium trader. These names tie a quiet Oxford community to the history of empire, colonial violence, and the transatlantic opium economy — one that connected Britain, India, China, and America (Uncomfortable Oxford).

At the same time, Florence Park tells another story. Its first residents were extraordinary people — Welsh miners who came to Oxford during the Depression. Known locally as Little Rhondda, the neighbourhood became a place of choirs, football matches, and resilience. In 1934, its tenants organised a rent strike against unfair conditions — echoing the spirit of labour movements around the world, including in America.

The Oxfordshire archives capture these moments in photographs of the neighbourhood from the 1930s (Archive 1, Archive 2). And even today, as the Oxford Mail observed, there remains a need to “rekindle the old community spirit” (Oxford Mail).

Florence Park, then, reflects two legacies side by side: the colonial pride of empire, and the community spirit of workers and migrants. To walk its streets is to walk through both.

At Florence of Oxford, we take these stories seriously. They show Oxford as a place where Romanesque arches meet workers’ protests, where colonial wealth meets community resilience, where ideas cross the Atlantic and return again.