The church of St. Paul, Oxford, is on Walton Street. The parish was created out of the parishes of Oxford St. Giles and Oxford St. Thomas, because of a growth in the population in the area known as Jericho. The church was built in 1835/6, and opened in 1837.
St. Paul's church was designed by H.J.Underwood, and is in the Classical style, with an Ionic pediment. It quickly became known as a centre of Tractarianism.
In 1869, following the further growth of Jericho, the western part of the parish of St. Paul's was split off, and made into a separate parish, served by the church of St. Barnabas.
In the 1950s and 1960s, attendances at St. Paul's began to fall, and in 1963 it was united with the parish of St. Barnabas. Finally the church was closed in 1969. After being used for some years as an Arts Centre, it is currently used as a restaurant.
The records of Oxford St. Paul were deposited at various times. Several records were deposited by the parish of St. Barnabas and St. Paul with the Bodleian Library in 1972, 1976 and 1979, and others by the Secretary of the Oxford Diocesan Pastoral Committee in 1979, before they were all transferred to Oxfordshire Archives in the 1980s.
Two appendices respectively list the contents of each accession, and provide a concordance between old and new references.
Catalogued by Robin Darwall-Smith in October 1998.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
The Victoria County History of Oxfordshire, Vol. IV, pp.411-412.