The Working Men's Institute
We are grateful to Catherine Robinson for permission to reproduce this article, taken from the 1993 edn of 'Hayfield Road - nine hundred years of an Oxford neighbourhood' co-authored by Catherine Robinson and Elspeth Buxton, drawing on unpublished research by Jinner Snodgrass.
The booklet is still available for sale, price £2.50, from Bunter's, the post office in Hayfield Road. All proceeds go to the funds of the Hayfield Road Residents' Association.In 1889 some of the well-to-do parishioners of St Philip and St James invited subscriptions for the building of a Working Men's Institute, "to provide rational amusement and instruction for working men of any creed, sect, or opinions, who may thus be kept out of public houses" (according to a letter from one local gentleman to another, soliciting a contribution in August 1889). He added, "The working men are taking it up and raising money themselves." Enough money was raised to buy from St John's College the 99-year lease of a plot of land on which to build a three-storey parish institute. It was the first house to be built in Polstead Road.
The ground floor housed a Working Men's Club, open each day from 2pm. There was a spacious Games Room for cards, darts, chess, and dominoes. Off this was a washroom and a bathroom (a boon to the men of Hayfield Road, whose houses had been built without baths). Running from one end of the building to the other was the billiards room, said to be the finest of its kind in Oxford, with raised cushioned seating round the table. The Oxford Billiard League held its championship matches here. A library contained all kinds of books and numerous periodicals. In every room there was a blazing coal fire. Everything in the Club was of good quality: real silver cutlery and real china.
The Club was a flourishing concern. It usually numbered about 150 members, who had to apply for admission and be sponsored. The heyday of the Club was the 1930s. During this decade a parishioner, Mrs Rashdall, gave the money to build a church hall projecting out from the back of the Institute. But after the war there began a decline of the Working Men's Club; even the billiard saloon lost its popularity. Part of the reason was the advent of television and part, perhaps, was the refusal of the Trustees to allow the sale of alcohol on the premises.
So St Margaret's Institute was built not just for the church or for the parish in the narrow sense, but for the use of the community as a whole - as, indeed, it is still used today.