Northmoor Road

Northmoor Road is a residential street in North Oxford, England.

Northmoor Road runs north-south, parallel to and east of the Banbury Road. At the northern end is a junction with Belbroughton Road and to the south is a junction with Bardwell Road, location of the Dragon School. Linton Road crosses the road east-west about halfway along.

St Andrew's Church, established in 1907, is on the southeast corner of the junction with Linton Road. Just to the north is Northmoor Place, a row of newer terrace houses. Most of the houses in Northmoor Road are substantial detached residences, built between 1899 and 1930. Many of the earliest houses at the southern end were designed by Harry Wilkinson Moore (1850–1915).

Perhaps the most famous resident of Northmoor Road was the Oxford academic and author J. R. R. Tolkien. He lived at No. 22 in 1926–30 and then a larger house at No. 20 in 1930–47. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and most of The Lord of the Rings while living at 20 Northmoor Road. There is now a blue plaque on the house. He later lived at Sandfield Road in Headington.

Another resident was Sir Martin Wood, who in 1959 set up his company, Oxford Instruments, in his garden shed at his house in Northmoor Road. Oxford Instruments, the first significant spin-out company from the University of Oxford, made the first superconducting magnets for MRI scanners and became a leader in medical technology. Later, in the 1980s, Wood founded the Northmoor Trust, aimed at promoting nature conservation at Little Wittenham and Wittenham Clumps in the Oxfordshire countryside south of Oxford. From 1994 to 2014, Michael O'Regan, OBE, and his wife Jane, lived at 6 Northmoor Road. O’Regan was co-founder of Research Machines, a company that supplies computer hardware and software for the educational market. In 1998, O'Regan founded the Hamilton Trust, a charity that provides resources for teachers.

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