Lawrence of Oxford

The house still retains the original Victorian decorative glass panels in the front door and porch, a most attractive feature, and a small detail which would have confronted TEL daily as he rushed home from school and ran up the front steps into the house.

The house abounds in stained glass. This particularly attractive pastoral scene and floral decoration is on an interior door immediately inside the front door. It was perhaps a feature of the house which TEL would have remembered in later years when he thought of the old family home back at Polstead Road, although heraldic decorations might have been more to his taste than such pretty pictures.

Remarkably, even the famous cupboard door (now in the ownership of the T E Lawrence Society) survived in the house for many years. It was against this door, at the beginning of every year, that Mrs Lawrence would line up her children to mark off their increasing heights on the dull green paint. All the names are here, including that of the fifth and final son of the family, Arnold Walter (Arnie), who was born in Oxford in 1900. Close examination of the door reveals that in his 16th year, 1904-05, TEL grew 2¾", but in the following year added less than 1", to attain a height which Arnie was to pass at the age of 14.