Boars Hill
The land at Boars Hill lies at the heart of what OPT is about – Oxford, its green setting, its internationally famous views and how we give access to others to enjoy these.
Boars Hill was where OPT first acquired land in the late 1920s, and it has continued to acquire, improve and provide open access here ever since. Today we are the largest landowner on Boars Hill with nearly 200 acres of fields, woods and gardens.
The importance of Boars Hill is more than just landscape. Its literary links go back to the 1840s with Arthur Hugh Clough introducing Matthew Arnold to the area in 1841, which later inspires and provides the setting for two of his best-known poems, The Scholar Gipsy and Thyrsis. Matthew Arnold's fame led to people visiting the hill and settling here, and it became the home to other artists and poets including poet laureates Robert Bridges and John Masefield, Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden who, like Arnold, were Oxford Professors of Poetry. The poet Elizabeth Daryush (nee Bridges) also lived on Boars Hill with her husband Ali Akbar Daryush.
Help us to continue looking after these valuable green spaces by JOINING or making a DONATION now.
Elizabeth Daryush Memorial Garden
Sir Arthur Evans and the Jarn projects
