Abstract
This paper examines environmental change associated with climbing plants (ivy/creeper) on several historical buildings in central Oxford using archival photographs. ViewFinder from English Heritage was used to access the photo archives in an advanced search of the area of “Oxford” and in the county of “Oxfordshire”. The study includes a variety of buildings, including colleges, churches, chapels, asylums, inns/hotels, factories, a brewery, pubs, a castle as well as architectural elements, such as doorways, cloisters, gates, and walls. The findings reveal that a majority of photographs denoted ivy-/creeper-clad buildings (in nearly 53% of photographs found mostly in the Taunt collection). The greatest abundance of climbing plants was found in the 1880s followed by the 1900s. A further examination of University colleges is warranted due to the earlier and more frequent appearance of ivy/creeper on these buildings.
Highlights
Historical photographs provide an abundant resource to understand environmental change as part of urban geographical studies
Climbing plants are tracked historically in a photo archival study that encompasses Oxford colleges, and other non-University buildings located in the city center
The overarching aim of the current study is to track the use of ivy/creeper on buildings in Oxford using historical photographs from the digital photo archive ViewFinder maintained by English Heritage
Summary
Historical photographs provide an abundant resource to understand environmental change as part of urban geographical studies. Climbing plants (ivy/creeper) are tracked historically in a photo archival study that encompasses Oxford colleges, and other non-University buildings located in the city center. The purpose of this research is to establish a clearer (broader or contextual) understanding of the use of ivy/creeper in an attempt to ascertain the reason for its appearance through temporal sequences of change captured by photographs taken at various locations. This contribution denotes geography from a combined human-physical perspective, which is evident in environmental geography. It focuses on human-environment interactions and, partakes of an environmental geomorphology, as demonstrated in previous similar (geographical) publications (e.g., [1])
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