It took me many visits to the Oxfordshire town of Chipping Norton before I came across the former hall of the Oddfellows, a philanthropic association that dates back in documented records to the 18th century and which still exists, in various forms, across the world. When I saw it, I was immediately struck by the street front with its segmental curved doorway, the shaped gable above, and especially the carved lettering and coat of arms. Somebody took pains to make the public face of this small hall special, and Pevsner tells me that the architects were a Birmingham firm called Hipkiss and Stephens. The building dates from 1910–11.
I could find little else about the history of the hall and was content to admire the way the lettering’s base line follows the curve of the doorway and how the coat of arms likewise fits the shape of the gable above. Another source of admiration is the carving of this relief, especially the images of care and what I take to be Christian charity that stand on either side of the arms. The stone and the Arts and Crafts idiom of these details sit well with the hall’s home in a small Oxfordshire town.
Web research led me in one other interesting direction. According to the excellent website Cinema Treasures, the Oddfellows in Chipping Norton were showing movies from about 1910, and by 1919 this hall was renamed the Picture House. It remained a cinema until it closed in May 1950, before reopening as the Norton Hall. It is now used by a private company offering post-production and media facilities and looks to have been the subject of a sensitive, caring conversion to meet the needs of the business. One feature of the conversion is that the current occupant’s signage does not mask or overshadow the old Oddfellow’s carved sign and arms, so there’s no barrier to the sort of architectural appreciation that I – and my readers – enjoy.
