Weathered graffiti from centuries of visitors covers the walls of this 1617 conduit house above Oxford
Open to visitorsan English Heritage site — check opening times and admission before you go
The London lawyer Otho Nicholson built this small stone conduit house around 1617 to protect the springs that fed the city’s first piped drinking-water supply. Inside, a lead cistern that once held around 20,000 gallons supplied a pipe running downhill to a fountain at Carfax, Oxford’s central crossroads, close to where Carfax Tower stands today. The building itself is a plain stone structure with gabled ends, and outside on the walls there is chiselled graffiti left by visitors between the 1600s and 1800s. You can only get inside on a handful of guided visits a year, run by the Oxford Preservation Trust, so this one’s for planning ahead rather than a passing look.
