Known as 'The Turl' — three colleges and a row of independent shops between Broad and the High.
Turl Street, known to locals as "The Turl", links Broad Street at the north with the High Street at the south. Brasenose Lane meets it from the east; Market Street and Ship Street from the west. Despite its short length, three of the University's historic colleges front the street — Exeter College, Jesus College and Lincoln College — and at the southern junction with the High stands the early-18th-century All Saints Church, used as Lincoln's library since the 1970s.
The street's name is older than the gate it commemorates. It was called St Mildred's Street in 1363 and Turl Gate Street by the mid-17th century, after a twirling gate set in a postern of the Oxford city wall. The gate was demolished in 1722; the section south of Ship Street was still being recorded as Lincoln College Lane in 1751. The northern stretch only existed because, by 1551, an extension known as "the path leading from the Hole in the Wall" had been carried through to what is now Broad Street.
Closed to through traffic since 1985 — a rising bollard cuts it off in the middle — the Turl now reads as a quiet retail row. Among the colleges sit an Oxfam bookshop, Scriptum Fine Stationery, a whisky shop, a wine shop, the long-established gentleman's tailors Walters of Oxford and a café. The three colleges still come together each year to organise the Turl Street Arts Festival.
Historical names: St Mildred's Street, Turl Gate Street, Lincoln College Lane
Sources: Wikipedia: Turl Street · OpenStreetMap
