Manzil Way
This is the page for Manzil Way, off Cowley Road.
Contents
Present
Manzil Way is home to numerous NHS and third sector health organizations, as well as the East Oxford Mosque. The Asian Cultural Centre occupies the only building left from the demolition of the former hospital/ workhouse.
1863 - 1983
The whole of the Manzil Way site was formerly home to the imposing Cowley Road Workhouse, approached by a long drive (now Manzil Way road). This workhouse for 330 inmates replaced the former Oxford City Workhouse on Rats & Mice Hill (Little Clarendon Street). It stood on eleven acres of land bought from Magdalen and Pembroke Colleges. Its foundation stone was laid on 6 April 1863 and it was completed in 1865.
During the First World War the Workhouse building was used as the Cowley section of the 3rd Southern General Hospital.
The building became a geriatric hospital in 1929, and the place of death of many people is described in burial registers as "205A Cowley Road". In 1951 the first geriatric day hospital in the country was opened on the site. The hospital closed in about 1983.[1]
In the 1970s this was a district nurses hub.
All that remains of the former workhouse is the chapel behind the mosque (now the Asian Cultural Centre). The buildings behind Restore, now used by Oxford Health NHS Trust for mental health services, seem to date from the time of the geriatric hospital (c.1950s).
Before then?
Cowleyroad.org is a DIY community history - help us write it!
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